This much-acclaimed Nigerian author has been on my radar for a long time because I have caught her speaking on BBC’s Talking Books and heard readers say good things about her. Finally at the end of last year, because these two were never sent our way for review, I ordered them to catch up with someone from this continent who sounds as if she has a unique voice.
Half of a Yellow Sun, (first published in 2006), winner of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, deals with a part of Nigerian history, Biafra and the war, long forgotten by most of the world. In fact, the author was determined to investigate this past, especially because it seems such a taboo subject. She discovered quite late in her young life that both sets of grandparents were involved in that war, yet the family never spoke about it.
The summary at the back of the book tells of a country, in 1960, blighted by war when three lives intersect; a boy from a poor village who works as a houseboy for a university lecturer; a young woman who abandons her privileged life to live with her new lover, the professor; and, the third, a shy Englishman who has lost his heart to Olanna’s firebrand twin sister.
It is through these disparate lives that the story of this bitter feud, which turns into catastrophe, is told. With everything happening in the world today, it’s eerie if like me you can remember those pictures of starving children which emerged during this horrific war. But that’s all that remains in my mind.
The book though is an amazing introduction to Adichie who, fortunately for us, writes in English but explains that she has developed her own voice and language. What strikes you is the way she tells a story, how she draws you in and how she doesn’t shy away from giving an unadorned view of her country.
And like any other place in this crazy world, there’s both good and bad. It’s remains sad that with the world currently placing such a high premium on money, those with good lives usually experience it on the backs of others.
But at least people are telling their stories and we can explore the background and get to know more about those around us. And at the same time, grow understanding for people who are given a certain narrative that is sometimes all about the fiction of their lives.
Amerikanah(described by the New York Times as one of the 10 best books of the year it was published, 2013) is even more exhilarating because it gives a contemporary feel of young contemporary Nigerians, starting in high school and taking them through their studies and their early adult lives, usually out of the country in London or America, where they further their studies.
That in fact is how the middle classes raise their children, urging them to move on for studies abroad. It turns those who go into warriors, while those left behind, sometimes not for the lack of trying, develop an inferiority complex. All of this plays out in damaging ways on the psyche of those who stay and those who return. But it is these fine details that make up a country, how people live their lives and how they perceive and are perceived by the outside world.
Even more intriguing is the way the author makes her journey to America and how the young Ifemelu, despite her academic success, has to deal with being black for the first time. It’s not something she expected or even understood would happen, so it takes her by surprise and spurs her into action as she has to deal with prejudice and being seen as the other by both black and white.
She starts writing an online column about being black in America and discovers many things about herself and those around her.
Returning home is as much a life-changer as her American sojourn. It’s about the assumptions from those who know you and don’t, it’s about the clichés and those which are turned on their head, it’s about the decision of a young man and woman to go home in spite of everything they were promised in lands so far away. Above all, it is about an African voice telling a story about people we should all get to know. Adichie has an astounding voice and writes in a manner that is captivating and compelling.