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Half of a Yellow Sun (Paperback)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

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Paperback Published: 15/01/2007

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Synopsis Author

In 1960s Nigeria, a country blighted by civil war, three lives intersect. Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna's enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's masterpiece, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, is a novel about Africa in a wider sense: about the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race - and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780007200283

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an award-winning Nigerian author who's spent much of her life between her home country and the United States. Before she moved to America at the age of 19, Adichie studied Medicine and Pharmacy at the University of Nigeria. In America, she studied Communications and Political Science, eventually going on to earn a Master's degree in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University. She then went on to get a Master's degree from Yale University in African Studies.

Her first novel, Purple Hibiscus, was published in 2003 and garnered international acclaim. Her second, Half of a Yellow Sun, dealt with the political turmoil of West Africa in the 1960s and went on to win the Orange Prize in 2007. In 2014, Adichie was shortlisted for the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction for Americanah, a book which explores themes of race and love in Nigeria and America.

Adichie spoke on being a feminist for a TEDx talk, which was then sampled in the song "Flawless" by Beyonce.

Book and writing awards

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004 (Purple Hibiscus). 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction (Half of a Yellow Sun). 2008 MacArthur Foundation grant. 2014 US National Critics Book Prize, and shortlist of 2014 Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction (Americanah).

Similar authors to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

NoViolet Bulawayo and Taiye Selasi.

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Reviews

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“Must Read”

'Half Of A Yellow Sun' is genuinely one of the best books I've ever read. I read it after enjoying 'Purple Hibiscus', Adichie's first novel, but surprised myself by enjoying this book... More

Elizabeth Gargett

31st August 2011

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“Superb”

I only read this due to the fact it was given to me through World Book Day, but I am glad that I made the effort to finish it. The tale of the uprising that lead to Biafra is told in, at times, fairly grim dialogue as... More

BigRow

6th May 2011

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