Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

Once again I have to thank the Internet for letting me know about a very excellent book which I otherwise would have missed. In the olden days, I read more randomly and with only minimal direction, but these days I can surf around reading book reviews and book blogs and news articles about books and thus do a much better job of choosing worthwhile reading. I discovered this novel when I read that the BBC had conducted a poll of major culture critics in the US and England to come up with a list of the best novels of the 21st Century (as of 2015). Half of a Yellow Sun was #10, and I had never even heard of it before!

This is a book that is doubly good, being both a fascinating story of the lives of five people and an informative account of the Nigerian civil war in 1968-1970 when a part of the nation tried to break away to form Biafra. The plot unfolds from the viewpoints of three of the characters: Olanna, the beautiful and educated daughter of a wealthy family who takes as a lover a university professor who is filled with revolutionary zeal; Ugwu, the young boy from a poor village who serves as houseboy for the couple; and Richard, the shy young Englishman who is fascinated by Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. The twists and turns of their lives would be captivating in any setting, but their placement in the context of civil unrest before the war and privation during the war provides an added dimension.

Any book which includes significant historical events surely aims to encourage readers to want to know more, and this one certainly succeeds in that aspect. Again thanks to the Internet, I was able to read about the war for Biafra, and I was made ashamed that a war in which the main weapon was the starvation of the civilian population happened during my adulthood with little awareness on my part. I vaguely remember seeing photos of starving Biafran children; that's the sum of my previous knowledge. How pitiful is that? How easy it is to ignore human suffering when it takes place somewhere else.

I highly recommend this novel. It is well done; it tells an interesting story about characters who seem like real people; it creates awareness of a place and time in history.


P.S. For those who might be interested, here are the top ten best books of the 21st Century (according to the BBC):
1. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
2. The Known World
3. Wolf Hall
4. Giliad
5. The Corrections
6. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
7. A Visit From the Goon Squad
8. Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
9. Atonement
10.Half of a Yellow Sun