Half of a Yellow Sun
Characters in Half of a Yellow Sun
5 characters, main characters first.Main characters
Olanna
A wealthy, educated Igbo woman whose life is upended by the Nigerian Civil War; she and her twin sister Kainene are forced to flee their comfortable lives as Biafra's situation deteriorates.
Ugwu
A young Igbo man from a rural village who becomes Odenigbo's houseboy; his journey through the war and into Biafran captivity forms one of the novel's most harrowing arcs. One of the book's three alternating point-of-view characters.
Richard Churchill
A shy English writer who moves to Nigeria and falls in love with Kainene, Olanna's twin sister; his sections offer an outsider's perspective on the Biafran War, and the novel alternates its point of view between him, Ugwu and Olanna.
Supporting characters
Odenigbo
Olanna's radical, idealistic lover—a mathematics professor at Nsukka University and a former militant activist—whose idealism is tested by the brutality of war.