Half of a Yellow Sun (2007)
Who wrote it?
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977- ; active 2003- ), born in Enugu, Nigeria. She was the fifth of six children in an Igbo family, which, a generation previously, had lost almost everything during the Nigerian Civil War. Her parents both worked at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka, her father as a professor of statistics and her mother the first female registrar. They lived on campus in a house formerly occupied by Chinua Achebe.
Adichie studied medicine at the University of Nigeria for a year and a half before switching lanes and moving to the US to study communications and political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia. She had written from an early age, publishing a poetry collection (Decisions) in 1997 and a play (For the Love of Biafra) in 1998, both under the name Amanda N. Adichie. After graduating in 2001, she completed a master’s degree in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins, where she also completed her debut novel, Purple Hibiscus (2003).
Her debut received wide critical acclaim, winning the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2005, as well as being shortlisted for the 2004 Women’s Prize. She has since published just two further novels, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah (2013), but has been active in other forms, returning to short stories as well as branching into non-fiction and most recently memoir with 2021’s Notes on Grief.
She has been an outspoken figure on various issues, most notably feminism. Her 2012 TEDx talk entitled ‘We Should All Be Feminists’ was something of a phenomenon, later published as a book as well as being sampled in Beyonce’s 2013 track ‘Flawless’. More recently, she has attracted controversy for allegedly transphobic comments and subsequently weighed in as a critic of ‘cancel culture’.
What's it about?
Half of a Yellow Sun takes place in Nigeria in the years before, during and immediately after the Nigerian-Biafran (Civil) War (1967-70) in the decade following Nigeria’s independence from the UK in 1960. It focuses on three central characters: Olanna, the Igbo daughter of a wealthy businessman and eventually wife of Odenigbo, a Maths professor at the University of Nigeria in Nsukka; Ugwu, an Igbo village boy from Opi, who joins Odenigbo’s household as a servant (aged just 13) at the start of the novel; and Richard, the English expat and eventual partner of Olanna’s twin sister Kainene.
The novel jumps back and forth in time, beginning in the early 60s. This period of cautious optimism following independence is characterised by relative calm and prosperity for its characters in its two central households. Odenigbo regularly hosts dinner parties with fellow affluent intellectuals in Nsukka, at which the factors that will lead to the war are discussed in brandy-fuelled abstract and academic terms. Ugwu is treated well by Odenigbo and Olanna, is passionate about his work and encouraged to read books and better himself. In Port Harcourt, Richard begins to detach himself from his expat community by falling for Kainene, while attempting to write about his passion for Igbo-Ugwu art.
The second main setting for the novel is in the late 60s, during the war. We see the beginnings of the war, as trouble brews between the Hausa and Igbo people, with massacres by the former of the latter. The Nsukka household of Odenigbo, Olanna, Odenigbo’s child (from infidelity) known only as ‘Baby’ and Ugwu are forced to flee to a refugee town, with their situation getting progressively worse as the war unfolds and the Igbo people in the secessionist state of Biafra subject to deprivation of humanitarian aid and subsequent lack of both food and medicine. As the war rages in the background, the focus of the novel is on the human impact on the central characters. All see relatives and friends die, often horribly, and their lives become increasingly distant from the middle class intellectual milieu that they inhabited in the early part of the novel.
What I liked
It’s a really engaging read in general. It was a book that I was happy to take my time over, and enjoyed spending time in its world. This is quite some achievement given the ostensible bleakness of the subject matter.
This is partly down to simply great writing - Adichie’s matter of fact, descriptive but nonetheless beautiful style suits my tastes (and seemingly many other people’s too). The horrors on display are presented as self-evident, without any labouring of the point or excessive dramatisation.
Within that, there’s also a brilliantly constructed sense of place and time. The stark contrast between the affluent, progressive, intellectual world of Nsukka in the early 60s and the squalor of the characters’ wartime surroundings is really powerful.
There’s almost a surfeit of memorable characters. Ugwu is hard not to love (at least until you’re forced to reckon with the depths he is sunk to when conscripted as a soldier); Odenigbo’s descent from opinionated bon viveur to despair-soaked alcoholic hit home hard; there is occasional light relief in the shape of Kainene and Richard’s servant Harrison; and of course the central pairing of female characters in Olanna and Kainene (‘definitely not identical’ we’re told repeatedly of their appearance; also very evidently true of their characters).
There are loads of rich, complex issues at play here, some of which are enlightening as historical context (e.g. the roots of the conflict in the colonial ‘invention’ of a hybrid Nigerian state composed of many opposing factions) and others that have more general resonance (the character of Richard - hopelessly obsessed with Igbo culture, despite to be assimilated into it but forever tied to the UK’s colonial heritage and doomed to failure as a result - as stand in for Adichie’s belief that Nigerian/African stories should be written by Nigerian/African writers).
There are also some interesting threads around the differing experience, even within the Igbo people, dependent on class / social background. The progressive, intellectual world that many of the main characters inhabit is given a brutal reality check by the war, bringing abstract ideas into harsh contact with the grinding poverty that was undoubtedly the reality for many Igbo even before the war. Perhaps that’s why Odenigbo, so sure of his intellectual vision for an independent Biafra, is the one who is least able to cope with his newfound circumstances.
What I didn’t like
While there are certainly moments of levity here and there, this is one of the more straightforwardly serious of all the prizewinners I’ve read across both Booker and Women’s Prize winners to date. The subject matter certainly deserves this respect, and it’s obviously extremely personal to Adichie, but it’s certainly not a novel that offers much in the way of hope or optimism. In a sense, though, that makes it all the more impressive that it’s such a pleasure to read.
There are one or two particularly harrowing moments - notably the previously mentioned incident involving Ugwu during his time as a conscripted soldier. Powerful stuff, though.
Minor criticism, for sure, but the novel-within-a-novel fragments were hard to grasp the significance of until the very end of the novel. Or was it just me that didn’t guess early enough where that thread was leading?
Food & drink pairings
Jollof
Brandy, while the times are good
Fun facts
Apparently there was some sort of audience participation in the voting for this year’s award. Not sure how much it counted for versus the judges’ decision but as it was 2007 the primary voting method was, of course, text message. Wonder if you got a free ringtone with your vote?
Also very 2007: the book was given a huge boost prior to its Prize win by an endorsement by the behemoth that was the Richard and Judy Book Club.
It was adapted as a 2013 film by Biyi Bandele, who also directed. Despite an impressive cast including Chiwetel Ejiofor (as Odenigbo), Thandiwe Newton (Olanna) and a still relatively fresh on the scene John Boyega as Ugwu, it received relatively mixed reviews from critics. It was filmed on location in Nigeria, which was the author’s only request of the filmmakers.
In 2020, in a readers’ poll to mark the Prize’s 25th anniversary, Half of a Yellow Sun was voted the best Women’s Prize winner to date.
Vanquished Foes
Rachel Cusk (Arlington Park)
Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss)
Xiaolu Guo (A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers)
Jane Harris (The Observations)
Anne Tyler (Digging to America)
The Inheritance of Loss was the winnner of the 2006 Booker Prize, which I think we’ve by now realised meant its chances of winning this one were pretty slim. I’ve not read any of the others - any tips among them?
2007’s Booker winner was Anne Enright’s The Gathering.
Context
In 2007:
Bulgaria and Romania join the EU, and Slovenia joins the Eurozone
Treaty of Lisbon is signed by members states of European Union
Virginia Tech Shooting - the deadliest school shooting in US history
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto is assassinated, along with 20 other people, at an election rally in Rawalpindi
Disappearance of British child Madeleine McCann in Portugal - case remains unsolved
WikiLeaks leaks the standard US army protocol at Guantanamo Bay
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner becomes the first female President of Argentina
Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh killing an estimated 15,000 people
Live Earth concerts for environmental awareness
HS1 train from London to the Channel Tunnel opens to public
First iPhone launched and released
Launch of Tumblr
Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (final book in the series)
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine
No Country For Old Men
There Will Be Blood
Atonement (movie)
Juno
Kanye West, Graduation
Radiohead, In Rainbows
LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
Life Lessons
War is hell
Score
9
Another genuinely excellent winner, full of insight and ideas, and one of those that genuinely feels like it’s expanding your understanding of the world. If that’s what you look for in fiction, then this is an absolute must-read.
I gave 2007 Booker winner The Gathering 7.5/10 - which feels about right as I can’t remember loads about it now to be honest!
Ranking to date:
Property (2003) - Valerie Martin - 9.5
The Idea of Perfection (2001) - Kate Grenville - 9
Half of a Yellow Sun (2007) - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - 9
When I Lived in Modern Times (2000) - Linda Grant - 9
Larry’s Party (1998) - Carol Shields - 8.5
Bel Canto (2002) - Ann Patchett - 8.5
Small Island (2004) - Andrea Levy - 8.5
A Crime in the Neighbourhood (1999) - Suzanne Berne - 8.5
On Beauty (2006) - Zadie Smith - 8
A Spell of Winter (1996) - Helen Dunmore - 8
We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005) - Lionel Shriver - 7.5
Fugitive Pieces (1997) - Anne Michaels - 6.5
Next up
Not sure yet, but the next Women’s Prize winner will be 2008’s The Road Home by Rose Tremain.
