Half of a Yellow Sun

If I am being completely honest, I think I enjoyed the learning experience more than I did the actual story. I learned a lot about a country and period of history I knew little about, very similar to how I felt after reading Wild Swans by Jung Chang.

The first half of the book is quite slow. We meet the main characters and learn quite a lot about Nigerian culture, especially food and I have already tried and failed to make Jollof rice. The second half focuses on the Nigerian Biafran civil war and certainly doesn't hold back. Corruption, mass killing, starvation, desperation, rape. It really does conjure up some horrific imagery.

When I finished reading, I felt unsatisfied because there is a big question that is left unanswered. But when you think about it, that's exactly what would happen at the end of a war. There are somethings that you will never know and there are somethings that you are better off not knowing.

Could see the hints of the magic that would shine through in Americanah some 10 years later

Of all the horror books I've read this season, this was the most harrowing and disturbing - because it actually happened, and continues to happen.

This was a historical fiction book about the Nigerian Civil War that took place in the 1960s. It covers 5 viewpoints - upper-class twin sisters, a professor, a boy from a village and a British journalist - and the relationships they share with each other. Obviously as a wartime story it's very gripping and can be quite sad to read, but there was also drama just in the interpersonal relationships between the main characters as well. Going into the book I knew absolutely nothing about the war, so it was really nice to be able to enjoy reading a book plus learn something new at the same time!

Okay, don't shoot me. I see a lot of people like this book and I totally get why! There's a lot to like here! The writing style is great, the depictions are vivid, and the author really knows how to paint a scene. I really felt like I got into the heads of the characters, their motives, and their feelings. The audiobook narrator was also really, really good.

But I just didn't find a lot here that I found interesting. The setting was unique, the culture fascinating, but I thought the start was really slow, and honestly I found the characters kind of boring. Ugwu was especially unlikeable to me. I don't know, I see why a lot of people like this book, but it just wasn't for me.

Started out very interesting. And very well written. The perspective of the young, new house boy was fresh and endearing. And then it turned into a never ending saga of war and moving and interfamilial squabbles. Without much depth. So for a book that started so well it disappointed me a lot. I stopped reading towards the later half because I got bored.

I was affected more by the large-scale tragedy than by any of the personal suffering of the main characters. The final personal loss did not hit me very hard because I was already numbed by the descriptions of the horrors happening to secondary and background characters, like the beheaded servant, or the malnourished children.

Throughout, I had the sense that the main characters were a bit contrived to be in an optimal position to cover all aspects of the war. For example, Olanna happens to have an ex from the north, who ends up on the opposite side of the war.

The Part 3 section was particularly jarring, an extended flashback focusing on soap opera-like subplots, which interrupts the story of the war.

All in all, despite the flaws in characterization, it was still a powerful account of a period of history that I was ignorant about.

Een heftig boek, met een diep ontroerend einde.

Nigeria undergoes a revolutionary schism and the republic of Biafra is created. This books tells the story of Biafra through the lens of a group of unlikely companions; the house-boy, the professor's mistress, and the Englishman who turns his back on the colonisers but will never fully understand Africa. I never quite got into this, I felt it wanted to teach the reader, more than tell a story. Maybe I'm just an Englishman who will never fully understand Africa, though.

A really powerful book about the war in Nigeria in the 60s, with good characterization and realistic description of both the political climate of the time and people's emotions.

We get three narrators, who represent different points of view: an educated woman from a wealthy family, a village boy from a poor family, and a white man who found himself in Nigeria. All three have their strengths and flaws, and all three reveal a different aspect of Nigeria.

I think the strongest side of this book is Adichie's ability to create a lively, believable story with characters you care about. You get to know them before the war, follow them around, see them go through difficulties. By the time the war starts, you already know the characters, which makes the whole portrayal of the horrors of war even more emotionally engaging.

The plot is also well paced and cleverly constructed, with a lot of skillfully placed parallels and allegories, all contributing to quality of the overall story.

This book is about the unsuccessful rebellion of Igbo community against the Nigerians which lasted 3 years.
The book is told through the experiences of several character on how the war affected their life and made it difficult.
It is such an eye opener to know about the Biafra war which was ignored by many countries and failed to recognise the condition of civilians who struggled to carry on.

4.5 stars. Everyone told me this book would wreck me, and it did, but not in an obvious tearjerker way. Half of a Yellow Sun starts with the mundane but swells into action with uprisings, war, and turmoil that affects the characters you've developed attachments to during the mundane chapters. The book has a cinematic quality to it that makes sense, knowing it was later adapted for film.

Better late than never to read this book, which was fascinating. Besides being an education in the Nigerian Civil War (the Biafran War), it was also an amazing portrayal of its main characters.

Here's my full review: Review of Half of a Yellow Sun

“If intentions were horses...” Wait, what's the proverb?

I've had intentions of reading Half of a Yellow Sun since I first noticed it in 2008. It has been sitting patiently at the top of my to-read pile for years. I'm not sure why it took this long, but it did. Finally, I can say I've read it and, not surprisingly, I enjoyed it greatly.

This is such an evocative and poetic novel. The language, the story, the characters, the setting—this is nearly a perfect novel. I was truly engaged and greatly informed. So why not perfect? Well, the pacing seemed off—the book drags a bit in the middle. And it does perhaps border on the melodramatic occasionally. So what? Everything done right in this novel makes up for its weaker points.

As I look back a few days after finishing Half of a Yellow Sun, I realize what stuck with me most was the characters. I really love watching Kainene, Ugwu, and Richard as well as many of the secondary characters. There were times I didn't like these characters, moments when they angered or disappointed me, but I guess this is a testament to how much I had invested in them and believed them to be real. I wasn't quite as invested in Olanna and Odenigbo, but I still enjoyed their respective stories.

I look forward to reading more from Adichie. Not only has this work made me excited about the author herself, but also other writers from the region whose work I haven't read in far too many years (Achebe) and other authors I have yet to discover. I have every intention to read a little more from west Africa in the next year or so. “...two intentions don't make a right”? “...people who live in glass houses should not have intentions”?

“Better late than never.”

I went in completely blind, knowing that I absolutely loved Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah which, along with Half of a Yellow Sun, recently made the top 20 for BBC Culture's Greatest novels of the 21st century.

It's gut wrenching historical fiction. Outlining the Biafran struggle for independence from Nigeria filtered through the lens of a small affluent Nigerian family. Adichie manages to balance the horrors of war with smaller family dramas without allowing either to become overwrought and melodramatic. Through the course of the book she will somehow manage to touch on colonialism, propaganda, child soldiers, aid efforts, Western media coverage, tribal superstition, famine and grief. It's appears effortless and natural.

What is incredible is the story of Nigeria and how a book can bring that place to life. Well duh, but I've never really considered it before, reading mostly Western works. It's got me thinking of tackling more international writers.

I want the whole world to read this book.

Like others have said, I'm glad I read this and I will probably never read it again. It's a fictional account of fictional residents of Nigeria/Biafra before, during, and after the civil war in the late '60s. It's not a war I even knew had occurred for a long time – as you might expect, it's not the war that gets top billing in American textbooks covering that era. As a consequence of my ignorance, I can't speak to its historical accuracy, although a cursory skim of Wikipedia turns up nothing to complain about.

Writing-wise, there are some superb passages, and some that tell too much rather than showing. I noticed the latter less as the book went on.

This is a rough read, not because it's dense (though it is well over 500 pages) but because it's depressing. The war was notorious for the starvation of much of what was then Biafra, and developed in part from the factionalism resultant from the colonially-imposed unification of different people into a single country. I don't pretend to be an expert, and I wouldn't mind learning more about it.

Fascinating book that made me sad, which is part of why it took me so long to get through it after my initial fast start – it's hard to want to pick up an upsetting book once you've put it down.