Many of us would struggle to locate Nigeria on a map. Almost none of us have heard about the Nigeria- Biafran Civil War that nearly tore apart the newly independent country in the late 1960s. If you look it up on Wikipedia, you will be told that the anti-Igbo pogroms and the subsequent exodus of Igbo people led to them the eastern part of Nigeria seceding from the state and declaring itself the Republic of Biafran. In the 2½ years of war, Wikipedia will tell you, there were about 100,000 military casualties and between 500,000 and 2 million Biafran civilians died of starvation.
These are the facts, but what lies behind the facts. What was Nigerian society like in the giddy days after independence? What were the dreams and aspirations of the newly independent society? How were they affected by the pogroms against the Igbo people? How was it to have to leave everything behind and flee to escape being killed by the advancing troops? How did people survive in the refugee camps? What was it like to live on the verge of starvation and worry about whether or not you will survive? When you were close to dying, did you still dream of a Biafran victory, or did you merely want the war to end?
These are the questions that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie tries to answer in “Half of a Yellow Sun”. She takes three narrators- Ugwa, who is the houseboy for a university teacher, Olanna, the beautiful and accomplished woman in the relationship with the university teacher and Richard Churchill, an Englishman who is equally fascinated by local art and Olanna’s twin- and uses their different perspectives to tell the story of life in the first decade of independence in Nigeria.
The story is told in two separate timelines- the early 1960s, which were the years immediately after independence, and the late 1960s, which were the years immediately before, during and after the Civil War. These timelines are not sequential, and it is interesting seeing how tension is built up because the timelines alternate. The early 1960s were a time of idealism and optimism, but they were also a time when corruption was getting institutionalised. People took pride in their identity, but they also looked at others with deep suspicion. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, as with every other newly independent country, this was actually a period of lost opportunities for the nation. The late 1960s were marked with violence- physical and sexual violence inflicted on people, and the violence of starvation and disease. Adiche doesn’t’ mince words while describing some very gruesome scenes and they will stay with you forever, reminding you of how war strips humans of their humanity.
The biggest strength of the book (as of all Adiche’s writings) are the characters. There are about half a dozen main characters, each of which is fully etched out- if you try to fit them into convenient stereotypes, they surprise you by exercising their individuality. For me the three most important characters were Olanna’s mother in law, Olanna’s twin and Olanna herself.
Her mother in law represents the traditional values of the Igbo people- she wants her son to marry a woman of her choice who will bear her strong grandsons. To this end, she plots and schemes and even when things do not go as she planned, she remains standing with her head held high.
Olanna’s twin is a hard headed businesswoman- intelligent, ambitious, cynical, and determined to make things happen. Olanna is midway between the two- beautiful, intelligent and empathetic, she retains the moral courage to carry on even when she loses almost everything that matters to her. All three women are powerful characters, yet in different ways, each is held down by patriarchal expectations.
Adiche is best known for her TED talk on the “Danger of a Single Story” where she argues that most of us subconsciously operate from the perspective of a single story, which ends up oversimplifying narratives and reinforcing stereotypes. “Half of a Yellow Sun” is a stunning example of how novelists can and must overcome the pressure to succumb to a single story narrative.
[I received a review copy from Harper Collins. The views are my own.]
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