A 2011 World Book Night selection.

February 2012 Guest Editor Joanna Trollope on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie...

Here’s a real find. A gorgeous (in every sense) young writer who makes modern stories sound  fresh but as if they come from ancient story tellers, at the same time – it’s something about the wonderful rhythms of her language. My favourite of hers is Half of a Yellow Sun but I loved Purple Hibiscus too. You can smell and feel Africa; you believe in these people – it’s not easy to create such a powerful reality, and she does it so well.

Our Editorial Guru, Sarah Broadhurst, has suggested others book and authors that would be perfect for you to read next or to pass on the recommendation - so your gift will keep on giving enjoyment. Her selections for this title are: Sofi Oksanen (Purge), Helen Oyeyemi.

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Best of the Orange Best 2010 by the Orange Prize Youth Panel.

Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 23 October 2008.

Shortlisted for Author of the Year at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008.

Winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007.

Reviewed on Richard & Judy on Wednesday 14 March 2007.

Sarah Broadhurst's view...

Nigeria in the 1960s and the birth of Biafra, a time of massacre, bloody conflict and the end of colonialism. We experience this strife through the household of a university lecturer, his houseboy, his lover and a white man seeking something we are never sure of. It is a tale of class more than race, of tribal differences and of the horrors of the period. It is immensely impressive, a big novel in every sense. Highly recommended. Click here to view a short film about this book.

Comparison: Tash Aw, Amitav Ghosh, Geoff Ryman.

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.

Reviews

'Heartbreaking, funny, exquisitely written and, without doubt, a literary masterpiece and a classic.' Daily Mail

'Stunning. It has a ramshackle freedom and exuberant ambition.' Observer

'I look with awe and envy at this young woman from Africa who is recording the history of her country. She is fortunate – and we, her readers, are even luckier.' Edmund White

'Vividly written, thrumming with life…a remarkable novel. In its compassionate intelligence as in its capacity for intimate portraiture, this novel is a worthy successor to such twentieth-century classics as Chinua Achebe's “Things Fall Apart” and V.S. Naipaul's “A Bend in the River”.' Joyce Carol Oates

About the Author

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who grew up in Nigeria, was shortlisted for the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing. Her work has been selected by the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and the BBC Short Story Awards and has appeared in various literary publications, including Zoetrope and The Iowa Review. photograph by Marco Del Grande   Fellow novelist ANNE BERRY on CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun is a stunning book throughout, set in 1960’s Nigeria as it erupts into the bloody Biafran War of secession. There is so much I loved about this book, the crisp narration that never balks from taking the reader into the darkest corners of man’s nature, the relationship between the twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, the clashing of their different natures and the divergent paths they follow. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation