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rowena

Rowena's Reviews

My true loves: Wilkie Collins, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Anais Nin, George Eliot, James Joyce, James Baldwin, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, bell hooks, Chinua Achebe, Langston Hughes, William Shakespeare... I'm falling for : Italo Calvino, Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, Wole Soyinka, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, Albert Camus, Margaret Atwood, Somerset Maugham, Junot Diaz, A.S. Byatt... And the lists continue to grow! I will read almost anything, as long as it's well-written. I always love to expand my reading horizons.

Currently reading

Orientalism
Edward W. Said
Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace
Finnegans Wake (Trade Paperback)
James Joyce
Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie A few months ago I read Chinua Achebe’s autobiography, “There Was a Country”, which depicted Nigeria’s Biafran War (1967-1970). This book also deals with the events before and leading up to the war.

This book was marvelous. The story just flows for the most part and the language used is so evocative. I’m sure people who have visited or lived in Africa will appreciate the descriptions of African life, African mentality, humour, nature and so on.

I have to admit, I much preferred the first half to the second half. It was hard to read about the Biafran war. The copy of the book I had actually showed pictures of children during the war who had suffered from kwashiorkor. It was truly heartbreaking. To think so many tribal wars occurred because of colonialists drawing arbitrary borders and also favouring one ethnic group over another (similar to what happened in Burundi and Rwanda).

The stories of the five main characters; Ugwu, Olanna, Richard, Odenigbo and Kainene were also interesting, though some parts were quite reminiscent of a Nollywood (Nigerian movie industry) movie (affairs, evil women, desperation for babies, meddling mothers etc.)

Since a lot of people consider Africa on the whole to be a homogeneous “country” where everyone speaks “African”, I’m hoping books like this will help show people that that’s not the case; even a country like Nigeria has so many tribes and cultures.

One quote I really liked was this: “The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.” A point to ponder.

Adichie is definitely a wonderful contemporary African writer, probably one of the best I’ve encountered in recent years. I’m really excited to read more from Adichie. She’s so young and it’s safe to suppose her writing will only get better