Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half of a Yellow Sun (4th Estate Matchbook Classics)

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

WINNER OF THE BAILEYS PRIZE BEST OF THE BEST

Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007, this is a heartbreaking, exquisitely written literary masterpiece

This highly anticipated 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.

The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character.

As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events. This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense: about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Reviewed by nannah on

Share
DNF @ 47%.

Content warnings (so far):
- fatphobia
- misogyny
- incest fantasies
- sexual assault

Representation:
- almost every character is Nigerian

I got to page 203 when I got an uncomfortable feeling from the description, “[his] voice was unmistakable; it was vibrantly male …” and had to look Adichie up. Sure enough, this is the transphobic author who, among things like bullying a trans author under her mentorship, approved of Rowling’s "TERF Manifesto”.

I thought I had deleted all her books from my to-read list, but I must have missed this one. Stopping here doesn’t make me upset; I disliked most of the characters in this book and only didn’t mind the rest.

I’d much rather read someone else’s work.

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 8 September, 2021: Finished reading
  • 8 September, 2021: Reviewed