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• 2 people find this helpful

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  • This was a moving account of relationships with a war torn situation (a war (Nigeria/Biafra) that many of us of a certain generation bearly remember and those of a younger one probably don't even know about) in the background that was heart rending in many ways. It was a bit gorey in places but tha ... Continue

    This was a moving account of relationships with a war torn situation (a war (Nigeria/Biafra) that many of us of a certain generation bearly remember and those of a younger one probably don't even know about) in the background that was heart rending in many ways. It was a bit gorey in places but that is probably the realtity pf war situations. A very interesting read.

    

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• ― RonYY said on Aug 8, 2007 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

• 1 person find this helpful

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  • This book started really well for me, I really got into the characters, but about half way through I just found I was struggling, it could be because suddenly it was less about the characters and more about the war. I always find it really hard to read about war and realise that those things actuall ... Continue

    This book started really well for me, I really got into the characters, but about half way through I just found I was struggling, it could be because suddenly it was less about the characters and more about the war. I always find it really hard to read about war and realise that those things actually happened and are still happening. This is a good book, just not for me.

    

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• ― Amz310783 said on Jun 1, 2007 about the Paperback edition| 1 feedback| 1 feedback

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  • I thought this was brilliant and certainly one of my favourite reads this year. A powerful very emotional novel; written so well by a young author. She has managed to make one actually want to read about a subject as disturbing as ethnic killings because of the realistic portrayals of the main chara ... Continue

    I thought this was brilliant and certainly one of my favourite reads this year. A powerful very emotional novel; written so well by a young author. She has managed to make one actually want to read about a subject as disturbing as ethnic killings because of the realistic portrayals of the main characters Olanna and Odenigbo, their houseboy Ugwu,Kainene(Olanna's twin)and Richard.
    A gripping read from cover to cover the story follows their lives during the sixties culminating with the Nigeria-Biafra War of 1967-1970.
    Taking the flag of Biafra as a title was I felt very appropriate. As the story progresses through the decade we witness just how much the lives of these middle class characters is changed. So that I am left with a much better understanding of the war and the effect it had on those living in Nigeria and Biafra. These disturbing happenings are images that will stay with you long after finishing the book. It is upsetting to read about such horrors but I think important that novels like this are written, that give us a better understanding of events that happen in other parts of the world. It will certainly make you think and maybe appreciate your life more!

    

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• ― Lindyloumac said on Sep 27, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • I hate to have "abandoned" any books! But this was a little hard going but I may come back to it some day. It was just not calling my name right now and so many other books are!

    

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• ― Helen said on Sep 6, 2009 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

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  • why didn't I know about Biafra?

  • A very personal story about people caught up in a revolution dealing with the personal and the political. A story about love, family, ethnic prejudice (both within Nigeria and without) with a political backdrop - an African revolution that came and went and left millions dead. You get to know and wa ... Continue

    A very personal story about people caught up in a revolution dealing with the personal and the political. A story about love, family, ethnic prejudice (both within Nigeria and without) with a political backdrop - an African revolution that came and went and left millions dead. You get to know and watch each character grow and change - the wealthy sisters who take different paths both away and towards each other, the English boyfriend, the African revolutionary, the houseboy. A great and disturbing book.

    

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• ― Gail Paris said on Feb 12, 2009 | Add your feedback

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  • Chimamanda ha la capacità di usare parole semplici, quasi banali, che nascondono baratri e vortici di sensazioni..

    

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• ― Mariuca said on Oct 18, 2008 about the Paperback edition| Add your feedback

A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

            With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.           

           Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.

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