Half of a Yellow Sun - BookWyrm.it

Brossura, 560 pagine

lingua English

Pubblicato il 27 Luglio 2007 da Vintage Canada.

ISBN:: 978-0-676-97813-1

(1 recensione)

With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s.

With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these …

With her award-winning debut novel, Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was heralded by the Washington Post Book World as the “21st century daughter” of Chinua Achebe. Now, in her masterly, haunting new novel, she recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s.

With the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Adichie weaves together the lives of five characters caught up in the extraordinary tumult of the decade. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy to Odenigbo, a university professor who sends him to school, and in whose living room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s English lover, Richard, forms a bridge between their two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives through a military coup, the Biafran secession and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place. Epic, ambitious and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a more powerful, dramatic and intensely emotional picture of modern Africa than any we have had before. --https://penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/879/half-yellow-sun#9780676978131

32 edizioni

KnitAFett ha recensito Half of a Yellow Sun di Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Hard-hitting, but well written.

4 stelle

I admittedly did not know anything about the Nigerian Civil War before reading this book. Tackle on the fact that I try not to read blurbs or anything about the books before starting them, this one took me entirely by surprise.

The first portion of the book reads more like a historical drama. There's family disputes, betrayals, affairs, all that soap opera goodness. Then the war breaks out and you see how much it messes everything up and how it changes the characters of the book as they try to navigate and survive the attacks.

Adichie pulls no punches when it comes to any portion of this book, especially the war portions. The descriptions of attacked areas can be quite gorey, so just be prepared for that. I feel like this is an important read and I'm definitely glad that I read it.

I will say that while I felt …

I admittedly did not know anything about the Nigerian Civil War before reading this book. Tackle on the fact that I try not to read blurbs or anything about the books before starting them, this one took me entirely by surprise.

The first portion of the book reads more like a historical drama. There's family disputes, betrayals, affairs, all that soap opera goodness. Then the war breaks out and you see how much it messes everything up and how it changes the characters of the book as they try to navigate and survive the attacks.

Adichie pulls no punches when it comes to any portion of this book, especially the war portions. The descriptions of attacked areas can be quite gorey, so just be prepared for that. I feel like this is an important read and I'm definitely glad that I read it.

I will say that while I felt warmed towards some of the characters in this book in the beginning, Adichie quickly pulls out their flaws and smacks you in the face with their realities. Every character is flawed, and every character does some really dumb crap that you want to smack them for, if you don't wind up despising them. War changes everything, rarely for the better, and that message is clearly sent through this book.

It did take me a while to get through because of how heavy it was, but I recommend it, especially if you're like me and have not read anything about the Nigerian Civil War yet.

Argomenti

Literary
Fiction / General
Fiction - General