“Education is a priority! How can we resist exploitation if we don’t have the tools to understand exploitation?”

Genre: Historical Fiction

Pages: 433

Published: September 12th, 2006

Rate: 4 ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads Synopsis
A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent
republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed. With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is
a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals
are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another. Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about
moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.

My Take
It is no secret that I love Chimamanda, one might even say she is a favorite author of mine. I am yet to read any book by her and be disappointed.
I really loved Half Of A Yellow Sun. The writing is brilliant, and haunting, drawing you in the minute you open that first page. There is something about Chimamanda writing that captures your attention, holding it till the last page as was the case in Half Of A Yellow Sun for me. The book is written in past and present, in a non linear way that is so absorbing and by the time you turn the last page, you understand why the author chose that format. I loved it! Half Of A Yellow Sun gives insight to the Biafran War, which is a major plot line in the book.

Chimamanda shows us different realities, before the war and after, some absorbing others not so much. The little
Historian buff in me appreciated this so much.

“She wanted certainty. She longed for a sign, a rainbow, to signify security.”

The characters in Half Of A Yellow Sun are some of the best written ones I have read, no lie! I loved reading on these characters, their everyday life, their interaction and their relationships, both platonic and romantic. I was heavily invested. If I were asked to pick a favorite I would say Ugwu. An ambitious, hardworking, humorous man who brought me so much joy. Half Of A Yellow Suns brings out class, ethnicity and realities of wars at the forefront, which
makes for a brilliant book. I highly recommend.

Have you read this book? What did you think about?