War is tragic and pointless. It is a monstrous game invented by the human race in the mistaken belief that it leads to something glorious and meaningful. It is a cauldron that cooks a toxic brew of hate, insular ‘patriotism’, negativity, violence and every other base instinct that lies buried in our collective psyche. It is a self-inflicted injury that is mistaken for a cure.
The story and characters of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun ride piggy-back on the contours of the Nigeria-Biafra war of late Sixties. Their fortunes mostly plunge downwards as the South-Eastern region of Biafra makes a misplaced attempt to secede from the remainder Nigeria.
Adichie is a consummate story teller. Comparison with her previous work The Purple Hibiscus is, perhaps unfair, but inevitable. Half of a Yellow Sun is a far larger canvas. Character after character is developed and pushed into the well-told story. The pain and destruction – both physical and psychological – of people caught in the crossfire of conflict are etched with understanding and empathy.
But very largely, there are few twists in the tale and an air of predictably hangs over it. It is not hard to predict the gradual depletion of the spirits of Odenigbo – the Professor and the master of the house. His occasional indiscretion can be seen before it happens. The life of his wife, the beautiful and sagacious Olamna also runs a predictable course. Ugwu, the somewhat precocious servant-boy does depart from the script by a display of heroics but soon returns to the original trajectory. Richard the expatriate who considers himself a Biafrian, also sticks to his expected ‘brief’. This is merely to report on the book as I saw it and not meant to be a criticism of the master story-teller.
In fact, the story closely mirrors life – even in the midst of great upheavals, most lives rarely experience game-changing cataclysm.
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