When the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 to form the
independent nation of Biafra, a bloody, crippling three-year civil war
followed. That period in African history is captured with haunting
intimacy in this artful page-turner from Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. She tells this heart-breaking, gripping story primarily through the eyes
and lives of Ugwu, a 13-year-old peasant houseboy who survives
conscription into the doomed, unprepared Biafran army, and twin sisters Olanna and
Kainene, who are from a wealthy and well-connected family. Tumultuous
politics power the plot, and several sections are harrowing,
particularly passages depicting the savage butchering of Olanna and
Kainene's relatives. But this dramatic, intelligent epic has a beautiful and personal side as well: rebellious Olanna is the mistress of Odenigbo, a
university professor brimming with anticolonial zeal; while business-minded
Kainene takes as her lover fair-haired, blue-eyed Richard, a British
expatriate come to Nigeria to write a book about Igbo-Ukwu art. How this group is impacted by the brutality of war will stay with the reader for a very long time. It is a searing history lesson in
fictional form, intensely evocative and immensely absorbing. 543 pages -- 18 hours, 56 minutes
