Customer Reviews: Read 120 more reviews...
 Disappointing October 9, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's not the sort of book I'd normally pick up - prize winning, political etc - but I was approached it with excitement after hearing good reviews from people I know.
Although the story seemed promising, neither the characters or themes interested me and the only thing that kept me going was the fact I had to read it. I found the skipping back and forth through time confusing, and was a bit baffled by the numerous characters who melted into one another at points.
It caused a bit of a stir at the book group I run due to its subject and some people loved it, but sadly i did not.
 A beautifully written novel taking us where no amount of reportage or photojournalism ever truly can October 2, 2008
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a deeply human novel about the 1967 Nigeria-Biafra war, a war that some have accused the world of turning away from, in a book that she says she always knew she would write. Within the novel a character is actually writing a book entitled `The World Was Silent When We Died'. Indeed, as a reasonably politically aware young student at the time, I remember, along with millions of others, turning my attention towards Vietnam and, by default, away from what seemed a complex internecine African struggle.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie does not lecture us, despite having lost both her grandfathers and other family members to the war. Instead, she creates a wonderful group of characters whom we come to care about greatly and whom we follow through personal stories that are in turn comical, tragic, idealistic, romantic and sexy, as well as reflecting the political forces and beliefs that culminated in the horrific slaughter and starvation of over a million people.
The narrative in this book is well served by a faultless prose style. Never tricksy or laboured, each chapter centres on one of the protagonists as their lives intertwine and separate and in this way we learn effortlessly a great deal about the cultural, geographical and political landscape of Adichie's country.
In the opening pages we are introduced to Ugwu, a village boy who lands the job of houseboy to Dr Odenigbo, an engagingly pompous radical academic. With Ugwu, we listen at the door to the after-dinner revolutionary talk of Odenigbo and his set of university colleagues as they debate, before the war and often in an increasingly inebriated state, various radical solutions to what they perceive as the plight of the Igbo people within Nigeria. This clever device allows many of the disparate views of the origins to the conflict to be expressed whilst acknowledging an ambiguity within perspectives and a multiplicity of potential causal factors. The deliberately divisive behaviour of Britain as the former colonial power, for example, and the machinations of the multinational oil companies, although alluded to only casually, are nonetheless pinpointed directly by this means.
Olanna and Kainene are the beautiful twin daughters of a successful African business man, Kainene successfully following him into the commercial world while Olanna frustrates her parents' hopes and goes to live with Odenigbo. As the fall of territory during the war leads to mass migration and increasing catastrophe, these two women reveal further their personal strengths and provide striking models of compassion, hope and unflagging determination. Kainene, in particular, is portrayed as a very `modern' woman and this, and many other aspects of this magnificent book, led me to question some of my lazy previous assumptions about the values, perspectives and lifestyles of at least a section of the Nigerian people in that period.
Joseph Stalin infamously said that whereas one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. By giving us a cast of characters whose lives and destinies we come to deeply care about, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie leads us inside the otherwise incomprehensible anonymity of such a huge tragedy and forces us to - gives us the privilege, really - of glimpsing the authentically human dimension to this conflict. A beautifully written novel taking us where no amount of reportage or photojournalism ever truly can.
Page after page, simply wonderful July 30, 2008
In Nigeria, devastated by civil war in the 1960s, we see the birth of the state of Biafra and relearn quite a bit of history. It is through the eyes of three different characters, whose personal tales intertwine, that history blends with their difficult paths:
Ugwu, a houseboy for eccentric university lecturer Odenigbo. Olanna, whose parents raise her and twin sister Kainene in the most privileged of backgrounds in Lagos; she leaves everything behind to follow Odenigbo as they are very much in love. Richard, a timid British national charmed by the Igbo culture and enthralled by Kainene, whose personality is an enigma for everyone. Obviously many other characters rotate all around and as we become acquainted with each of them, their presence is always pertinent and complementary to the main story.
I would not add anything else as the tale would be spoiled but I cannot refrain from strongly recommending this book as it is informative in many ways, its narrative flows beautifully, heartbreakingly, even comically at times and your heart is captured within the lines. It does not dwell on the violence of war even though it (the violence) is perceived in subtle but incredibly effective ways.
Read this book, you will not regret it. Quoting from my review title, simply wonderful, indeed.
Absorbing July 27, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I found this a riveting read, with convincing characters and very informative about the Biafran/Nigerian war. I shall definitely be reading her first novel now.
 instructive but too one-sided July 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I found the book interesting in so far as I didn't know anything about the situation in Nigeria at the time the story is set in- I was two when the events unfolded- but I do remember growing up at a time when adults often told you to eat up and be grateful because you were not a Biafran child. Not that I needed any such encouragement.So being a total ignoramus about Africa I did manage to get an idea of what it must have been like. I read different reviews and sometimes agree and sometimes not. I do agree when readers say that they don't really know that much more after finishing the book.The context is not clear for someone with no previous knowlegde of the war. At the same time it might be unreasonable to expect the writer to furnish all the historical background. Other readers wrote that they hadn't felt connected with the characters and I must admit I failed to warm to them as well.They were interesting enough but didn't leap off the page. Maybe it has to do with the fact that their actions are mostly the focus and not really their thoughts.I sometimes felt I was reading a catalogue of facts rather than a novel. But something else bothered me a lot more and it is the fact that the book is so one-sided. It is a celebration of Biafra, its courageous, heroic inhabitants, its martyrs... I wouldn't have a problem with that if we had had access to how people in the other camp thought, what their opinion about the causes of the war were but we never get this much needed other perspective. Once again, it wouldn't be easy for the writer who has lost family members in that war and has relied on family memories to tell this tale, to incorporate a part seen through the eyes of Nigerians.However the problem is that without it, the book reads a lot like propaganda and I am not sure that someone who was Hausa, Fulani... and not Igbo would necessarily accept it as the truth.
What the book did achieve however, was bring to our attention, a way of life, colourful people, customs, beliefs that a lot of us were probably unaware of, and it has helped us gain some insight into a very complex and moving page of history.
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