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Download Guide 25 2007 WINNER HALF OF A YELLOW SUN BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY and the subsequent war, Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise, and intimately, the devastating Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of disappointments that marked this time and place. award-winning and bestselling novels, including Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun; the short story WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR collection The Thing Around Your Neck; and the essay In Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie deftly describes the We Should All Be Feminists. A recipient of multiple layers of class and privilege a MacArthur Fellowship, she divides in Nigerian society at the time the her time between the United States novel is set, from Ugwu’s daily life to and Nigeria. Olanna’s ‘nouveau riche’ background, and Odenigbo’s life in university PLOT SUMMARY intelligentsia, contrasted to the life Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recreates of his mother. When the war breaks a seminal moment in modern out, Adichie considers how those African history: Biafra’s impassioned positions and statuses change – whilst struggle to establish an independent also including the presence of two republic in Nigeria during the 1960s. British characters, one of whom Adichie weaves together the lives (Susan) represents a particularly toxic of five characters caught up in the colonialist view, and Richard, who is extraordinary tumult of the decade. sympathetic to African culture. Fifteen-year-old Ugwu is houseboy Adichie also presents us with a to Odenigbo, a university professor number of intertwined human stories who sends him to school, and in whose living inside a traumatic, idealistic and pivotal historical room Ugwu hears voices full of revolutionary zeal. period. In telling Odenigbo, Olanna, Kainene, Richard Odenigbo’s beautiful mistress, Olanna, a sociology and Ugwu’s stories, she is able to explain the context teacher, is running away from her parents’ world of their lives while making the events around them of wealth and excess; Kainene, her urbane twin, is relatable and understandable for readers who may taking over their father’s business; and Kainene’s or may not be familiar with that part of Nigerian English lover Richard forms a bridge between their history. Conversely, the historical context allows two worlds. As we follow these intertwined lives Adichie to create characters that act in different through a military coup, the Biafran secession ways in reaction to those specific external pressures. www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk © Women’s Prize for Fiction The Women’s Prize Trust is a registered charity (charity number 1181253) HALF OF A YELLOW SUN BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE DISCUSSION POINT NEXT STEPS In Half of a Yellow Sun, Adichie includes short Use the title The World Was Silent When You Died as sections from a fictional non-fiction book called The the inspiration for a poem. Who or what will be the World Was Silent When We Died. The book seems to focus of your piece? Who has died? Your poem may be a record of the colonial history of Nigeria and be about a group of people in history, someone in the events leading to the Biafran current times or someone you war. Discuss what you learn knew personally. Why was the from these sections - did you world silent when they died? It previously have any knowledge may be that you interpret this as about Nigerian history? What is a reverential silence, or a silence Adichie suggesting with the title which was bad because nothing of her invented non-fiction book? was said or done. What does the inclusion of these If you were writing a non-fiction sections lend the novel? Is it book about modern British useful for a work of fiction to politics, what would you write include some (apparently) ‘non- about and how would you fiction’ segments, especially when write about it? You might, for this novel is set at a specific time instance, try and write a non- and place in history? Do they fiction piece explaining Brexit, detract from the story, or add to which in its own way might your appreciation of it? Is it good be seen as a move towards to be reminded that the events independence. You might like you are reading about in a story to write a number of short really happened? How does that segments like the text from The reminder make you feel? World Was Silent When We Died. QUESTIONS HALF OF A YELLOW SUN IS A MOVING AND EXCITING Adichie has described her book as ‘a story about BOOK BY AN INCREDIBLY EXCITING AUTHOR. love’. Do you agree? Why? Why not? IT’S ASTONISHING, NOT JUST IN THE SKILFUL SUBJECT What are the tensions between Olanna and Kainene MATTER BUT IN THE BRILLIANCE OF ITS ACCESSIBILITY about? How are they different to each other? MURIEL GRAY Olanna is disgusted at the cockroach eggs in her CHAIR OF JUDGES 2007 cousins’ house and reluctant to let Baby mix with village children because they have lice. How is her privileged outlook changed by the war? What do you think about Ugwu’s participation in the rape scene? Is reading Susan’s character difficult? Are there still people holding the same views as Susan now? How do you interact with them, if at all? BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS AMERICANAH BY CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE STAY WITH ME BY AYOBAMI ADEBAYO www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk © Women’s Prize for Fiction The Women’s Prize Trust is a registered charity (charity number 1181253).
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