“Half of a Yellow Sun”: The Book That Will Blow Your Mind!

“The World Was Silent When We Died” - simple words but they leave you feeling guilty towards an incident that occurred years before your birth! That is the quality of impact left by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s writing in “Half of a Yellow Sun”. A powerful and resistive historical voice of the Igbo people during the Nigerian civil war, the book has won several awards. 

The book begins in a simplistic nature, narrating from the viewpoint of a rural teen, Ugwu, who is to be the houseboy for a wealthy professor. The author builds up the story at a slow pace, but nevertheless keeps us hooked to it. The entire book is split into four parts of the sixties decade.

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The first part begins when life is normal in Nigeria, when all the tribes - Igbo, Hausa, and others coexist mutually. Towards the end of the first part, conflicts and tensions arise. But in the second part, the author breaks from this to plunge us into the early horrors of the civil war that broke out in the late sixties. Severe massacres of the Igbo, the confusion, uncertainty all become very apparent themes. 

The third part gives us a brief respite, by going back to the early sixties, but also makes us wonder at the absurdity of everyday life in comparison to the war. And then comes the biggest blow of all - the war, starvation, drone attacks, death of loved ones, immigration, displacement, poverty, hunger, and much more. The author doesn’t hesitate to present stark images of civilian suffering, or children’s deaths. 

During this entire process, unaware to ourselves, we realize that we have built strong connections with the main characters - Ugwu the houseboy, Olanna a wealthy woman and a professor, also the lover of Ugwu’s master, Odenigbo, and Richard, an Englishman who falls in love with Olanna’s twin, Kainene. Their pain becomes ours and we feel for them deeply. 

The three (Ugwu, Olanna, and Richard) are the chief narrators of the story and every chapter shifts between them. Using their varied backgrounds, Adichie manages to elicit a wholesome picture of the war, with each of them joining the jigsaw puzzle of multiple experiences. For instance, Ugwu, goes on to become a soldier in the war, and we get an inside view of the war soldiers’ experiences. 

In terms of literature, the book belongs to the war literature genre. It is a literary resistance to the centre, thus becoming a postcolonial novel. Furthermore, the book aims to present a realistic Biafran image, to always remember the stories, the memory of those who lost their lives over the war and the injustice done to them. 

There are also the elements of political allegory in the novel, the twins - Olanna and Kainene represent the two nations, Nigeria and Biafra. Kainene’s getting lost is yet another allegory for Biafra’s state after the war. While this is the minimum, there are many other deeper analyses available online in the form of research papers. Overall, the book is an excellent piece of art and is a subaltern record of a historical event and the existence of an oppressed group of people.