Friday 11 March 2011

World Book Night Challenge 23/25


Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche


I think that this was the book that I was least looking forward too, I've avoided it since publication for some reason and then after hearing several radio programmes about it really dreaded reading it.

Well how wrong could I have been?

It was fantastic. Again set in a time and place that I knew nothing about, Nigeria in the last 1960s at the time of the Biafran War, but from page one I was hooked. I read this in eBook form on the plane and the 4 hour journey just vanished, I was so engrossed that getting off the plane and starting the holiday was a wrench!

It isn't an easy book, the characters are not always nice but they are real. Every single one leaps out of the page and exists as you read and Adichie is so good at description that I could smell Nigeria as I was reading.

This book isn't for the fainthearted, it spares the reader nothing but at the same time is utterly wonderful. This book was a great treat and one that I could have overlooked for many years without World Book Night and a personal challenge.


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