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At the 41st anniversary of the pogrom of 1966, I wrote a short story I called The Blank Tape. It is a story of a video tape in which frames of the pogrom were recorded ends up blank when played back. The blank tape is a metaphor for all that we do not know about the events that led to the war. If I had read Half of A Yellow Sun, I would not have felt so blank.

Half of A Yellow Sun (HYS) begins at the days of innocence sprinkled with idealism and promises. Ugwu, an amiable houseboy, goes to live with a radical math professor, Odenigbo, at the University of Nigeria. He will become a reverse mirror of his master, the glue that ties the distinct stories of his master, the master’s girlfriend, Olanna, Olanna’s twin sister Kainene, Kainene’s English boyfriend Richard, and a war that brings them all together.

Seen primarily from the eye of Ugwu, HYS shows him growing from a boy thirsty for knowledge to an astute observer of life around him. All house boys are influential but Ugwu belongs to the category of very influential house boy, VIHP. When he is conscripted to fight for Biafra, he leaves a hole behind. Once reported killed in battle, his ghost hovers around until he is seen again, wounded in Biafra.

Though born twins, Olanna and Kainene cannot be any more different. Their relationship with each other and their rich business parents shows no closeness. Still, despite the dysfunctional nature of their family, the war, rather than break the twins permanently, ends up bringing them closer.

Though London educated, Olanna finds a surrogate family in Aunty Ifeka, the wife of her Uncle, Mbaezi, who lives in Kano. Aunty Ifeka is the woman who breast-fed her and her twin when their mother’s breast milk dried up, or according to Kainene, when her mother becomes scared that her breast might droop. She is the woman she openly wishes is her mother.

Olanna travels to northern city of Kano to cool off when facing changing tides of life. It is where she has a family she could not make out of her own immediate family. It is also where she has a friend, Mohammed, she could not make a husband out of. It therefore follows that it is in the same Kano that she confronts the impending war when she becomes a witness to the massacre of her beloved aunt, uncle and her pregnant cousin, Arinze.

What proverbs did for Achebe in Things Fall Apart, piercing portrayal of human spirit does the same for Adichie.

Adichie shines most when she is dealing with human relationships. Here is how Olanna confirms her suspicion that something happened between Odenigbo and Amala by mere looking at their interaction when she arrives from a trip to Kano: “It was a tiny moment, brief and fleeting, but Olanna noticed how scrupulously they avoided any contact, any touch of skin as if they were united by a common knowledge so monumental that they were determined not to be united by anything else.”

Olanna goes to Kano, to Aunty Ifeka to find solace. There she finds words of wisdom from her aunt about Odenigbo and life.

“Odenigbo has done what all men do and has inserted his penis in the first hole he could find when you were away. Does that mean somebody died?”

Talking about her own experience with her husband, Aunty Ifeka says, “I now know that nothing he does will make my life change. My life will change only if I want it to change.”

“You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Do you hear me? Your life belongs to you and you alone,” she advices Olanna.

Olanna in her depression sleeps with Richard. It crushes a relationship with her sister that has been largely distant. This is how Kainene reacts to Olanna’s betrayal: “You’re the good one and the fortunate one and the beauty and the Africanist revolutionary who doesn’t like white men, and you simply did not need to fuck him. So why did you?”

Just as she did in Purple Hibiscus, Adichie captures the sounds and sense of the generation in its brutal honesty, like when she watches two kids playing and one saying to the other, “your mother’s pussy.”

In several interviews, Adichie has said that she did not set out to write a war novel. She wants to see HYS as a love story. Her only savior is in the crafty decision to halt the story at Part Two and jump into Part Three. Part Three rescues it from what is more than a war novel, but one that makes its readers want to go back to war. It brings the tempo down, explains the mystery of the baby that suddenly arrived in Part two.

Odenigbo’s idealism is tried several times in the course of the book. “The reason we live the life we do is because we do not remember that we will die,” he says as he mourns the killing of his mother in Biafra. The intellectual quickly degenerates into a drunk as the struggle for Biafra flutters. The mantra, “If the sun refuses to rise, we will make it rise,” becomes an empty expression.

In the mist of the war, while Olanna is eking out a living, she gets a letter from Mohammed, her northern prince friend who finds it important to inform her that, “My polo game is much improved.” To be fair to him, he also sends soap.

The saboteur virus in Biafra is so pronounced that Olanna has to complain, “We cannot keep beating people because Nigeria is beating us.” In spite of the damaging impact of the saboteur phenomenon, Richard, a believer in the Biafran cause has hope as he observes: “A country born out of the ashes of injustice would limit its practice of injustice”

In planting her story inside the war, Adichie presents the picture of what transpired before and during the war. “A single act could reverberate over time and space and leave stains that would never be washed off,” She writes.

Half of a Yellow Sun implicates the conscience of everyone who reads it: those who know but do not care; those who care but do not know; and those who do not know and do not care. For readers like me who know little about the war, HYS gives them a full picture. It shows in frames after frames how it all developed.

It all started with the British experience in trying to conquer the Africans. The Igbo gave them toughest time because the Igbo had no kings to be bought over. And when the British succeeded through brutal wars, the Igbo immediately constituted themselves into the bulk of the opposition against the British rule. It came to a head on with the general strike of 1945. The British blamed the Igbo for the strike. They banned Igbo published newspapers. The British generally encouraged anti-Igbo sentiments which began to spread fast across the country. The British GOCs were promoting unqualified soldiers in the name of ethnic balance. In the North, the northern leader, Sardauna, would not let Igbo children go to public school. Igbo Union had to set up the Igbo Union Schools. Immediately the coup of 1966 occurred, it was the BBC that first began to call it an Igbo coup because majority of the coup plotters were Igbo. In Lagos, as soon as the crises began, Igbo people were being taunted and beaten. They were being told: “Go Igbo, go so that Garri will be chap. Go and stop trying to own every house and every shop.”

A man in three-piece wool suit in a plane with Olanna from Kano to Lagos who thinks Olanna is Yoruba captures this anti-Igbo sentiment thus:

“The problem with Igbo people is that they want to control everything in this country. Everything. Why can’t they stay in the East? They own all the shops; they control the civil service, even the police. If you are arrested for any crime, as long s you say keda, they will let you go.”

The same intensity with which it portrays injustices against the Igbo is also used to portray Igbo excesses as when Sardauna’s death is mocked with mmee-mmee-mmee bleating of a goat.

The raggedness of the Biafran army is shown graphically openly. Yet, at the end, it is the French ambassador who captures the feeling about the gallant Biafran soldier when he is quoted to have said. “I was told that Biafra fought like heroes, but now I know that heroes fight like Biafrans.”

As I read the last word of HYS, I said to myself, Daddy can keep his story. Mommy can keep her story of walking to a military base to identify wounded Uncle of mine or being at the bedside when my grandfather died. Uncle Joel who as Captain in Biafra lost his finger to a flying bullet and has some bullets still lodged in his body. He, too, can equally keep his story. So should Uncle Festus who did not go to war because he is a Jehovah Witness. I have read Half of A Yellow Sun and now I know.

...Read the full article.

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=Robot;273957>At the 41st anniversary of the pogrom of 1966, I
wrote a short story I called The Blank Tape. It is a story of a video
tape in which frames of the pogrom were recorded ends up blank when
played ...Read the full article.

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Thank you Mr Okonkwo. I absolutely adore Chimamanda. Anyi welu mmadu!
I loved, loved HYS for many obvious reasons and also for very salient ones;
- The vivid images of the the war(sad to say some scees are firmly lodged in my subconscious0
-The theme of empowerment through education as illustrated through Ugwu's character
-The theme of women empowerment by Aunty Ifeka, Olanna and her sis
-The story of a beautiful and rich history of intellectualism and principles
-Simple yet complicated love stories told with such poignancy they sound like beating hearts .................................There was nostalgia for what was and what could have been, pain for where we are yet hope for what is still possible.

Three cheers for Ms Adichie!!!!!!
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@ Rudolf

Pls get ready for the backlash or silence from the spawns of the genocidalist nigerians.

great piece of write-up though

HE WHO IS SURROUNDED BY ENEMIES SHOULD NEVER SLEEP (IGBOS) !!!!!!

GOD BLESS
AMEN

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That's a beautiful write-up! HYS is a classic.

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“I was told that Biafra fought like heroes, but now I know that heroes fight like Biafrans.”

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What a quote!

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Did Sir Ahmadu Bello,the Sardauna of Sokoto, the then Premier of the North prevent Igbo children from attending public schools? I doubt it much.
Was that in the entire Northern Nigeria or in a section of the North?
I went to school in the North while Sir Ahmadu Bello was the Premier and there were Igbo children as my schoolmates and classmates.
As a very powerful Premier then,if he did not want Igbo kids to go to school, he could as well not allow Igbo Unions to establish private schools, afterall he is the Premier with executive power.
Lets be fair to Sir Ahmadu Bello for he did not do what you alleged he did.
A book is now in the writing. I take it upon myself to write this book and state out several facts as facts are because of how several uninformed and misguided Igbo people have misplaced facts about events that led to the civil war, the civil war,how Biafra lost the war,the blame games etc.
It makes me sad that on several instances when I read certain accounts of those events,I'm always confronted with misplaced facts and blame games and this article is not an exception.
That 'heroes fought like Biafrans" is quite laughable.

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=Agidimolaja;274372>Did Sir Ahmadu Bello,the Sardauna of Sokoto, the then Premier of the North prevent Igbo children from attending public schools? I doubt it much.
Was that in the entire Northern Nigeria or in a section of the North?
I went to school in the North while Sir Ahmadu Bello was the Premier and there were Igbo children as my schoolmates and classmates.
As a very powerful Premier then,if he did not want Igbo kids to go to school, he could as well not allow Igbo Unions to establish private schools, afterall he is the Premier with executive power.
Lets be fair to Sir Ahmadu Bello for he did not do what you alleged he did.
A book is now in the writing. I take it upon myself to write this book and state out several facts as facts are because of how several uninformed and misguided Igbo people have misplaced facts about events that led to the civil war, the civil war,how Biafra lost the war,the blame games etc.
It makes me sad that on several instances when I read certain accounts of those events,I'm always confronted with misplaced facts and blame games and this article is not an exception.
That 'heroes fought like Biafrans" is quite laughable.

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We are eargerly waiting for those facts as defined by "you" just as everyone has his own version of "truth". Please release the book, let us read your own "true" and perfect "facts"- Angel Gabriel.

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@ Ogoo Okonkwo...

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''The same intensity with which it portrays injustices against the Igbo is also used to portray Igbo excesses as when Sardauna’s death is mocked with mmee-mmee-mmee bleating of a goat''.

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I think that ''Mmee-mmee-mmee'' or ''Ntoo-ntoo-ntoo'' (depending on which part of Igboland one comes from), which is mostly used when someone (especially a naughty child that wouldn't listen) runs into trouble (and /or comes back to you in tears), simply means ''serves you right'' and not necessarily the bleating of a goat in the above context.

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@Agidimolaja,

Pls state some facts here on nvs for us before bringing out your book, you see your version of the saraduna stopping igbo school children almost carried water with me, then you made the comment that "biafrans fighting like heros is quite laughable", then i realised that you are here to spite us igbos, to insult, to justify with stealth the genocide against a people whose only crime was to be progressive in all endeavors and who were the only nigerian race at that time who collectively threatened western intrest in nigeria and africa as a whole.



Pls make those points here, because i can bet you $1000, that you have no book coming out, and if it did it will not break away from the fallacies already peddled by pro-nigerian genocide justifying press and intellingencia. So pls lets have a debate right here.


People like you who carry hate, will live and have no peace in nigeria, because you people support evil for no reason, rawanda, burundi, dafur, uganda, congo etc all happended because nigeria and the world let 1966 holocaust happen, even major victor banjo a yoruba said to wole soyinka in 1967 that he felt disgusted by the silence in both the nigerian public and press to the pogrom against the igbo (the man died by wole soyinka).
But people like you in 2008 after 40yrs of northen feudal rule are yet to see the light, smell the coffee or even have an epiphany why? Because the primary focus of the nigerian is to kill the igbo.


Yet nigeria that you justify burns every day, go to sahara reporters to see your presidents 13yrs old son flashing money while the rest suffer, yet you only have time to laught at igbos and their plight, what is this with you people?, pls in you reply tell us for once what we did wrong to you nigerians? It will help us to know why all the wickedness, we igbos still do not know why we are marked for extinction by you all, so pls explain to us, what is your problem, is the saraduna of sokoto your dad, is akintola your dad, is arthur unegbe your dad?

the niger bridge is about to collapse, pls focus on that and leave us alone, what is the difference between you and the nazis? Answer none as both of you are genocidalist in nature, pls get off the igbo bashing wagon, that is a bit tired now isnt it?, we dont rule naija any more do we? So what else do you want? Are we not not allowed to grieve for our dead?, is it a crime to cry over biafra, did biafra not protect us, did it not make sure there are igbos today for you to insult? Yes biafra worked for us as we are still here and not extinct as planned by you people, those who say we lost the war are those who lack critical thinking and psycho-analytical brain cell, and those who fail to interprete the history very well, and most nigerians fall into that category, but we dont care, we will be here for ever praise god for that fact.


dont forget to answer my questions agidimolaja, do not mess about, dont beat around the bush, no insults either, keep it straight and clean ok


God bless you and the igbos as well


amen

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Thank you Angel Gabriel Lovenest,
The book will be released when it is completed,I'm still writing
But mind you that writing a book is different from going to the store to pick up a loaf of bread,hopefully you would still be around if accident did not happen to you before then.
Facts cannot be denied!