'Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant'

Half of a Yellow Sun (4th Estate Matchbook Classics) Paperback

Half of a Yellow Sun (4th Estate Matchbook Classics)

Chimamanda Adichie

A heartbreaking, exquisitely written masterpiece.

One of the ten books – novels, memoirs and one very unusual biography – that make up our Matchbook Classics’ series, a stunningly redesigned collection of some of the best loved titles on our backlist.

In 1960s Nigeria, three lives intersect. Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy Englishman, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Nigerian Civil War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece is a novel about the end of colonialism, class and race – and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

Reviews of Half of a Yellow Sun (4th Estate Matchbook Classics)

    • ‘Vividly written, thrumming with life…a remarkable novel. In its compassionate intelligence as in its capacity for intimate portraiture, this novel is a worthy successor to such twentieth-century classics as Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” and V. S. Naipaul’s “A Bend in the River”.’ Joyce Carol Oates
    • ‘Here is a new writer endowed with the gift of ancient storytellers.’ Chinua Achebe
    • ‘I look with awe and envy at this young woman from Africa who is recording the history of her country. She is fortunate – and we, her readers, are even luckier.’ Edmund White
    • ‘Absolutely awesome. One of the best books I’ve ever read.’ Judy Finnigan
    • ‘[Deserves] a place alongside such works as Pat Barker’s “Regeneration” trilogy and Helen Dunmore’s depiction of the Leningrad blockade, “The Siege”.’ Guardian

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