Reviews - Meio sol amarelo

4.46k reviews for:

Meio sol amarelo

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

4.33 AVERAGE

tommato's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional tense

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

sshriya's review against another edition

3.75

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

chess_pdx's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous informative reflective slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

aia's review against another edition

4.5

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

sophphh's review against another edition

4.0

Half of a Yellow Sun tells the story of the Biafran struggle for independence from Nigeria in the late 1960s, through the eyes of three people and their friends and family.

The first is Olanna, the daughter of a rich Igbo businessman who falls in love and moves in with a headstrong but goodhearted professor - Odenigbo. Olanna has a twin sister, Kainene, from whom she has grown slowly apart, but it is Kainene's English lover, Richard, who holds the second viewpoint for our story. Richard is fascinated by Igbo culture, spellbound by Kainene's exotic beauty and distant manner, and wants to immerse himself in his new country. Thirdly, we have Ugwu, Odenigbo's young houseboy, loyal and sweet, who we follow during the crucial years as he turns from a child into a man.

The years are turbulent ones, as the British leave Nigeria and tribal tensions erupt into terrible violence. The Igbo people decide to secede from Nigeria and form the new country of Biafra, but they are not allowed to leave peacefully and war becomes inevitable. Our characters are pround Biafrans, thrilled with their country's new independence and ill-prepared for the terrible hardships the war will bring them.

This was a remarkable book, full of patriotic fervour and love for the Igbo people, and I came to love them too as I read. I knew very little about Biafra, beyond the awful famine that came about because of Nigerian blockades, but this novel looks way beyond that to the people who invested so much hope, blood and toil in a nation that was doomed to fail. However, this isn't a preachy novel about nationhood, it's a story about a family, and their relationships with each other are at the heart of the book.

The author really takes her time with these characters and we are given the chance to get to know them very well before the war starts to intrude on their lives. Olanna is the lynchpin of the family, providing stability for Odenigbo and acting as a mother figure to Ugwu. Her relationship with her sister is complex, and the events of the book only complicate it further, but there is a strong love there. By the time war started, I was quite afraid for the characters' safety and hoped they would all make it through to the end of the book unscathed.

The language used is quite sparse but very effective. There's a distinctive style to it which is hard to put my finger on, but which I recognise from Chinua Achebe's work. I don't have enough experience of African literature yet to know whether this detached feeling is a Nigerian thing or whether it's just coincidence, but it's interesting and I like it. The writing is very atmospheric, and I had no trouble imagining the scenes being played out on the pages.

This is justifiably considered by many to be a modern classic and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in Africa, 20th century history or just a really good story