Title: Half Of A Yellow Sun
Author: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Published: 2006
ISBN: 978-0-00-750607-1
Pages: 433
Language: English
Half Of A Yellow Sun, winner of The Orange Prize for fiction is written by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This novel is set before and during the Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967-1970 and wonderfully presents the human emotions and the relationships.
Major characters:
Odenigbo – A university professor
Ugwu – Odenigbo’s houseboy
Olanna – Odenigbo’s lover, daughter of a high-class family
Richard – British expatriate, writer
Kainene – Olanna’s twin sister, sharp-tongued businesswoman
The story revolves around these five main characters and their relationships, feelings, emotions and moreover their lives before and during the war.
After putting it on my to-read list for so long, I finally read Half Of A Yellow Sun and now it is one of my favorite books.
Below is my review of ‘Half Of A Yellow Sun’ on Goodreads:
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
It’s been a while since I gave 5 stars rating to a book. Half Of A Yellow Sun is remarkable that leaves everlasting impression in your memory. The writer has wonderfully presented the history with marvelous characters and fascinating storytelling. The book incorporates love, resentment, ups and downs of relationships, human emotions, the brutality of war, and its effect on an individual, a family, a community, and a country. Adichie has composed this masterpiece so magically that you will find yourself immersed deep into the characters and scenarios. You will travel back in time to the 60s’ Nigeria and you will definitely enjoy the ride.
Favorite Quotes from Half Of A Yellow Sun
- “This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.”
- “You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me?” Aunty Ifeka said. “Your life belongs to you and you alone.”
- “There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.”
- “You can’t write a script in your mind and then force yourself to follow it. You have to let yourself be.”
- “Greatness depends on where you are coming from.”
- “Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?”
- “Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.”
- “I knew what I wanted to run to. But it didn’t exist, so I didn’t leave.”
- “If the sun refuses to rise we will make it rise”
- “I don’t think love as a reason. I think love comes first and then the reasons follow.”
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Also, read my review of ‘The Spy’ by Paulo Coelho.
