“Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)

Synopsis

In 1960s Nigeria, three lives intersect. Ugwu works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic lover, the lecturer. And Richard, a shy Englishman, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. Amongst the horror of Nigeria’s civil war, loyalties are tested as they are pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them imagined.

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, this is a novel about race, class and the end of colonialism – and the ways in which love can complicate everything.

Nicola’s Creative Reading Group reading list

Year 2 – “Africa and the Caribbean” (Oct 2007 – Jun 2008)

“This Blinding Absence of Light” by Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco)
“Woman at Point Zero” by Nawal El Saadawi (Egypt)
“Bitter Fruit” by Achmat Dangor (South Africa)
“Sleepwalking Land” by Mia Couto (Mozambique)
“Matigari” by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)
“In-Between World of Vikram Lall” by M.G. Vassanji (Tanzania)
“Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
“Ancestor Stones” by Aminatta Forna (Sierra Leone)
“The Dragon Can’t Dance” by Earl Lovelace (Trinidad & Tobago)