There was a time in the history of Nigeria when the Igbo people from the East segregated to form an independent nation called BIAFRA, this was in 1967. The outcome was a three year civil war which has been captured in this riveting novel by Adichie; a young Nigerian author whom some have called the Chinua Achebe incarnate.

Set in a university town and a collegiate environment, the story is told mostly through the eyes of a few lives whose safety becomes jeopardized and their loyalty to one another becomes tested. There is thirteen-year-old Ugwu, a village boy who is employed by a university professor; Odenigbo who is full of revolutionary and anti-colonial zeal. The professor’s mistress is Olanna, a beautiful Lagos woman now living in the university town leaving behind her well connected high class life to follow the zeal of her new lover. There is also Richard, a British expatriate whose only interest is in the Igbo-Ukwu art and Kainene; Olanna’s twin sister.

Ugwu and the two couples must endure the brutalities of a war inspired by mere cultural arrogance and ignorance. Adichie has passionately captured the gruesome occurrences of lives being shattered as a result of ethnic norms, racial profiling and status segregation in a post-colonial era. Biafra would have been ………, unfortunately no one will ever know what Biafra would have been. All we know is that during its short life, children were slaughtered, women were brutally raped, soldiers were fatally wounded and history never remained the same.

Award winning author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is fearless in her depiction of the horrific events in this novel. This is an attribute that sets her apart from other young African authors. The Baltimore Sun has named Half of A Yellow Sun one of the best books to come out of Africa in years. Chinua Achebe himself as praised Adichie’s work.

Though a fiction novel, Adichie has employed the true life events of known survivors of the Biafra war to bring life to her story. This is not a boring history text book or another novel by a popular writer from those days. It is a novel by a very young author who is successful in taking us back in time to a place where history was marked in Africa; in the eastern part of Nigeria, bringing that time closer to the reader’s heart and ultimately making the reader a part of that history.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction for Half of a Yellow Sun in 2007.

Half of a Yellow Sun is availbale in all major bookstores or online.