Books
by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
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Half of a Yellow Sun |
In 1960's Nigeria, the lives of three disparate people intersect: Ugwu, houseboy to a university lecturer, Olanna, who has abandoned her privileged family to live with the professor, and Englishman Richard in thrall to Olanna's twin. Embroiled in the horrors of civil war, pulled apart and thrown together in unimaginable ways, their allegiances are cruelly tested. Definitely not a book for bedtime, but its lucid prose will make you want to keep the pages turning.
*Winner 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction
(Jenny Baker - bwl 40 June 2007) |
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Purple Hibiscus |
The narrator, Kambili, is the innocent teenage daughter of a rich Nigerian industrialist, an intolerant Catholic fanatic capable of domestic violence. A coup d'état results in Kambili and her brother being sent off to safety with the noisy family of their aunt where she discovers fun and laughter, and falls in love. I fully recommend this first novel by a young Nigerian who is clearly very gifted.
(Jeremy Swann - bwl 26 October 2004) |
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Purple Hibiscus |
Fifteen year old Kambili and her brother Jaja are products of a privileged home ruled with an iron fist by their father, a wealthy Nigerian businessman and fanatical Catholic. Following a military coup they are sent to stay with their aunt, a struggling university teacher, and her three outspoken children; in their company Kambili and Jaja experience a wholly different sort of family life. A beautifully written consideration of freedom against repression, and love against fear.
(Siobhan Thomson - bwl 57 Summer 2010) |
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