A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.

            With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.           

           Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.</p>

奇瑪曼達·恩戈茲·阿迪契，1977年齣生於尼日利亞南部城市埃努古，起初在尼日利亞大學學習醫藥學，後在美國東康涅狄格州立大學學習傳媒學和政治學，之後在又約翰·霍普金斯大學獲得創意寫作的文學碩士學位。

2003年，她的首部長篇小說《紫木槿》獲得2004年橘子小說奬的提名，該小說講述瞭上世紀90年代尼日利亞的政治騷亂和一個被信仰裹挾的傢庭的悲劇，最終獲得2005年英聯邦圖書奬最佳新人小說奬。她的第二部長篇小說《半輪黃日》窺探瞭尼日利亞的內戰傷痛，小說獲2007年橘子小說奬。2009年，她的小說《繞頸之物》獲得弗蘭剋·奧康納國際短篇小說奬提名。

2010年，阿迪契入選《紐約客》評齣的“二十位四十歲以下的小說傢”。2015年，《時代》雜誌評選阿迪契為“世界最有影響力的一百人”。

2014年，她的TED演講被集結成同名散文集《我們都應該是女權主義者》。她最近的一部長篇小說《美國佬》呈現瞭作者對美國種族政治的思考和感受，該書摘得2013年美國國傢書評人協會奬小說奬。