Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun

Summary

A voice in Rama was heard. Lamentation and great

mourning; Rachael bewailing her children and

would not be comforted, because they are not.

(Matthew 2:18, Douay)

I suggested in an earlier publication that African literature in the twentieth century was not happy. It was lachrymal: it was a literature of lamentation. I suggest further in this study that Chimamanda Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is a carry-over from the twentieth century. Half of a Yellow Sun is a weeping novel, a novel about what happened to the Igbo of Nigeria at a certain point in their history. The world created by Adichie is one of betrayal, death, conflict and loss. The Igbo were victims, also, of the residual shenanigans and schemings of British imperial policy in Nigeria.

It is a historical novel, going by its four major divisions. The historical novel broadly reconstructs a series of historical events and the spirit of a past age. In these historical events personages and characters are introduced who participate in actual historical events and move among actual personages from history. The fictional characters interacting with actual historical personages, through their actions give expression to the impact which the historical events have upon people living through them, with the result that a picture of a bygone age is created in personal and immediate terms.