Books: Half of a Yellow Sun shocked me into a sense of my own expatriate identity

By Claire Armitstead

The title of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s award-winning novel comes from the flag of Biafra, embodying the breakaway state’s hopes during the brief three years of its existence in the Nigerian civil war. As one of her central characters, Olanna, explains to a group of schoolchildren: “Red was the blood of the siblings massacred in the north, black was for mourning them, green was for the prosperity Biafra would have, and, finally, the half of a yellow sun stood for the glorious future.”

Adichie focuses on Nigeria's present for new novel

Chimamanda Adichie

By JON GAMBRELL

The traffic is there, grinding life to a halt as the middle class pound out messages on BlackBerry mobile phones and worry about Facebook. The heat, the sweat and the daily tragedy of unclaimed bodies lying alongside roadways, passers-by hurrying past for fear of someone else's misfortune becoming entangled in their own.

This is modern life in Nigeria's largest city, Lagos, which becomes almost a character of its own in novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's new book, "Americanah." And within its pages, one catches self-acknowledged glimpses of the writer herself, who shot to fame with her previous love story set during Nigeria's civil war called "Half of a Yellow Sun."