Half of a Yellow Sun

Olanna, a wealthy Igbo woman, shares her life with Odenigbo, an idealistic and radical mathematics professor at Nsukka University. Ugwu, a young man from a rural village, joins their household as Odenigbo's houseboy. Their comfortable days end when the Nigerian Civil War begins and Biafra declares independence.

The book follows these three people as violence, displacement and betrayal break up the life they had built. Olanna flees toward refugee camps. Ugwu, who arrives as an innocent village boy, hardens into a survivor. Odenigbo watches his idealism come apart.

This is historical literary fiction set in Nigeria between 1967 and 1970, written in the third person from three intertwined perspectives. The structure is non-linear: Olanna's earlier years in Lagos are woven against her present on the run, so the reader sees what she has lost as she loses more.

Expect a serious, unflinching portrait of the Biafran conflict, told through character rather than battle. The attention stays on how war reshapes identity, love and memory for ordinary people, and the tone is sombre as the pressure on the three lives builds.