This novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. It has now been turned into a major film starring Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor, due for release in 2014.
Set in Nigeria during the 1960s, ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ is an unforgettable read and a true modern classic. Its three central characters are swept up in the violence of the turbulent years of civil war. Ugwu is one of them, a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. Another is a middle-class woman, Olanna, who has abandoned a life of privilege to live with her new lover, the revolutionary professor. And the third is Richard, a white man and a writer, who falls in love with Olanna's remote and enigmatic twin sister.
As their lives intersect, all three are forced to question their responses to the unfolding political events. ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’ is the story of a terrible war, but also an extraordinary story about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race – and about how love can move in to complicate all of these things.
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