Half of a Yellow Sun follows the lives of three characters whose
lives are connected. Ugwu is a thirteen year old boy who leaves his
village to become a house-boy for a university professor. He
realises his life is not like the life of other house-boys. They do
not sleep in a spare room within the homes of their Masters, nor
are they encouraged to read books the way that Ugwu is. Ugwu is
eager to please and proves himself constantly to be a valuable
asset to his Master's household.
Olanna is the professor's mistress. She and her twin sister have
led priveleged lives in Lagos, due to their father's status. She
gives up that life in order to live a more exciting life with her
"revolutionary lover" as her sister often describes the
professor.
Then there is Richard, Unlike the rest of the characters within the
pages, Richard is a white man who is eager to make his life in
Africa. He is obesessed with Olanna's twin sister, who is very
different from Olanna, as she is a very strong, fearless, and
independent woman.
Their lives change when war breaks out - the book re-creates the
struggle of the 1960's between Nigeria and Biafra - and as igbo
speaking people, they find themselves fighting for the right to
live.
I don't know where to start with this book. I fell in love with it
in a way that is rare for me. The characters are each filled with
such energy and very distinctive, and I think what surprised me the
most with the characters, is that even those who make a brief
appearance were wonderfully defined. The detail of the war itself
is phenomenal and often brutal. Chilling scenes are often described
such as when Olanna is on a train on her way back home. Olanna is
seated on the floor, urine spreading on the floor of the train and
a lady asks her to come and take a look at something. Olanna looks
into the bowl that the woman is holding and there is a little
girl's head with ashy-gray skin, braided hair, rolled-back eyes and
open mouth. That's an image that will stay with me for a long
time.
Raw emotion leaps from the pages in this novel and I often found
myself biting my lip as I worried about the characters. Thanks to
the brilliant detail, each of them is so easy to feel attached to
and I had to keep stopping myself from skipping ahead to reassure
myself that they were all fine.
The glimpse of another culture was definitely what made this book
something special for me though. I enjoyed learning about the
foods, the language - there are words in igbo sprinkled throughout
the pages -, the people, and the landscape. It was just an amazing
novel. It says a lot that it's a little over 400 pages and I
practically inhaled it in just over a day.
This one is a definite must read.