Half of a Yellow Sun

This novel is set in Nigeria before and during the Biafran War of the late 1960s. It follows Ugwu, a village boy who becomes houseboy to the radical academic Odenigbo; Olanna, Odenigbo's privileged lover; her twin sister Kainene; and Richard, an Englishman attached to Kainene. Their lives in Nsukka and later in the secessionist east are broken by coup, famine, and the fighting that follows independence politics. The book moves among kitchens, streets, and the front as the characters lose safety and certainty. It is a war novel told through a household and two sisters, not a staff-officer history.

Bound in grey duotone pictorial cloth printed and blocked with title and author in yellow. Black slipcase with front blocked and printed with a yellow design.