With effortless grace, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illuminates in her second novel a
seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra's impassioned struggle to
establish an independent republic in southeastern Nigeria during the late 1960s.
We experience this tumultuous decade alongside five unforgettable characters:
Ugwu, a thirteen-year-old houseboy who works for Odenigbo, a university professor
full of revolutionary zeal; Olanna, the professor’s beautiful young mistress who has
abandoned her life in Lagos for a dusty town and her lover’s charm, and Richard, a
shy young Englishman infatuated with Olanna’s wilful twin sister Kainene. These
characters are pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them imagined
possible. Half of a Yellow Sun is an electrifying modern masterpiece about the ways in
which love complicates everything.