Half of a Yellow Sun

Starred review from June 26, 2006
When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Adichie (Purple Hibiscus
). Adichie tells her profoundly gripping story primarily through the eyes and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives conscription into the raggedy Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing, particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has its lush and sultry side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; business-minded Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art—and whose relationship with Kainene nearly ruptures when he spends one drunken night with Olanna. This is a transcendent novel of many descriptive triumphs, most notably its depiction of the impact of war's brutalities on peasants and intellectuals alike. It's a searing history lesson in fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing.

In this stunning novel of Biafra's doomed war for independence from Nigeria, Robin Miles brings a complex world and explosive era to vivid life. Her protagonists are Olanna and Kainene, British-schooled sisters from a wealthy Igbo family; Kainene's English lover and Olanna's academic revolutionary one; and Ugwu, a young houseboy from a tribal village. Miles switches effortlessly from Oxbridge accents to the fierce clicking speech of Igbo, Fulani, and Hausa militants and to the familiar drawl of an American expatriate from the Deep South in this compelling story of idealism and slaughter. Miles's performance is extraordinary. She never gets lost in a sentence, she never botches an accent or fails to make a character live, and her pacing is perfect. You won't soon forget it. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine