Book 0182

I love books that get passed around. My eldest daughter read Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, raved about it gave it to my middle daughter. They both said “Mum you must read it”. I hate being told what to read but I picked it up on holiday and did not put it down.

Its so alive, the story of what happened in 1960s Nigeria and its civil war but its full of people you become entwined with . It made me realise how little I knew of that history. As a child I was told to give money to starving Biafrans without understanding “we” were deliberately starving them.

But more than this it reveals how one can slip from a confortable existence into a precarious one. How war is not one big loss but a series of small ones until one is fleeing for one’s life.

Now when I see all the refugees fleeing from war I imagine too they had once had nice homes and messy families and parties and feuds and affairs and whole lives, which have been reduced bit by bit by war. Adichie brought this home so vividly that I am glad my children brought this book home to share.