quote: We do not usually associate wisdom with beginners, but here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie knows what is at stake, and what to do about it. She is fearless, she would not have taken on the intimidating horror of Nigeria's civil war. Adichie came almost fully made.
-------------------------Chinua Achebe.
quote:Prose as lush as the Nigerian landscape that it powerfully evokes...Adichie's understanding of a young girl's heart is so acute that her story ultimately rises above its setting and makes her little part of Nigeria seem as close and vivid as Eudora Welty's Mississippi.
---------------------------The Boston Globe
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's second novel, HALF OF A YELLOW SUN, is a Nigeria-Biafra war storytelling between five outstanding characters. Ugwu, from a remote village is employed by a university lecturer, Odenigbo. Olanna, rich and beautiful, who shuttles between Lagos and Nsukka later becomes Odenigbo's wife; and Richard, a white English man and Olanna's sister lover, Kainene.
The novel's main theme is the pogrom and civil war. The beginnings of civil unrest are heard only as noise from offstage. The first air-raid comes during Olanna and Odenigbo's wedding reception as guests throw themselves to the ground in the garden. While Odenigbo danced, the secession of Biafra is declared, but when news breaks of the massacre of Igbo army officers, Kainene (Olanna's Sister) rocks backwards and forward with the radio burbling in the background.
Richard is at the airport when Northern soldiers invaded the tarmac and starts shooting Igbo passengers while the security guards fold their arms and watch. Richard wets his pants and nearly misses his plane because of the confusion and mayhem, "he stood aside vomiting."
Ugwu's enlistment into the Biafran Army begins with a near miss: in search of fresh water, he discovered soldiers were all over, and tries to take refuge in a church. The priest won't let him in and Ugwu is hauled off. At training camp, his head is shaved with broken glass and the rest is history--a catastrophic war with ominous consequences.
[ November 30, 2006, 07:07 PM: Message edited by: Ambrose ]
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