Half of a Yellow Sun ‘one of the greatest 21st-century novels’

Chimamanda Adichie’s award-winning novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, has been chosen as as one of the greatest novels of the 21st century.

According to BBC, the novel is one of the greatest novels in 21st century, coming in at number 10 on a list led by Junot Díaz’s science fiction novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Adichie’s novel was the only novel from Africa to have made the list, others coming from British and American writers and novelists.

Adichie’s book, which was authored in 2006, came over thousands of novels authored in the current century.

“In her audacious and vividly imagined second novel, Adichie drew upon her ancestral past to write about the Biafra conflict, which traumatised her country and her family for three years after the Igbo people of eastern Nigeria seceded in 1967 (her grandfather died in a refugee camp during the war),” BBC said of the book.

The novel is told from the perspectives of twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, a 13-year-old houseboy and Richard, a British expatriate in love with Kainene.

Olanna’s academic boyfriend who favours secession, is also a key character, as Adichie shows the repercussions of post-colonial power struggles on individual lives.

Walton Muyumba, author of The Shadow and the Act and a note critic, described Adichie’s work as an impressive piece put together with great skill.

“Adichie’s novel is a tour de force, artistically and intellectually,” she said. “It is also a serious political novel about love in wartime.”

The 37-year-old Nigerian novelist won the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction and the Anisfield-Wolf book award for the novel, which was adapted into a movie in 2014.