Half of a Yellow Sun
THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION ‘WINNER OF WINNERS’
‘A literary masterpiece’DAILY MAIL
‘An immense achievement’OBSERVER
‘A gorgeous, pitiless account of love, violence and betrayal’ TIME
In 1960s Nigeria, three lives intersect. Ugwu works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic lover, the lecturer. And Richard, a shy Englishman, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. Amongst the horror of Nigeria’s civil war, loyalties are tested as they are pulled apart and thrown together in ways none of them imagined.
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece is a novel about race, class and the end of colonialism – and the ways in which love can complicate everything.
‘Vividly written, thrumming with life … a remarkable novel’ Joyce Carol Oates
‘Adichie entwines love and politics to a degree rarely achieved by novelists’ Elle
‘Absolutely awesome. One of the best books I’ve ever read’ Judy Finnigan
”'Heartbreaking, funny, exquisitely written and, without doubt, a literary masterpiece and a classic” - Daily Mail
”'Stunning. This novel is an immense achievement” - Observer
”'A landmark novel. Adichie brings to history a lucid intelligence and compassion, and a heartfelt plea for memory” - Guardian
'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
”'The character burrow into your marrow and mind, and you come to care for them deeply - something that is all too rare” - Daily Telegraph
‘A sane and compassionate new voice in an often strident world’Financial Times -
”'Adichie uses language with relish. She infuses her English with a robust poetry” - Helen Dunmore, The Times
”'A powerful account of the Biafran War, horrific and tender in equal measure” - Sunday Telegraph
'Absolutely awesome. One of the best books I've ever read' Judy Finnigan -
”'I wasted the last fifty pages, reading them far too greedily and fast, because I couldn’t bear to let go … magnificent” - Margaret Forster