Interesting but less than gripping
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I'm one of those minority reviewers who was less than gripped by this novel. I finished it but it seemed a bit of a chore at times (although other parts seemed to flow). I felt frustrated by the characters - the love stories between them never seemed convincing. I was hugely interested in the subject matter - I knew so little about the Biafra war and the book prompted me to find out more. However, the traumatic events surrounding our characters (and often happening to them) never seemed to be fully explored. The word Biafra is synonomous with starvation yet in the book I never got the sense of how bad things really were. Then in the last few pages, the war is over and they go home (minus Kainene). Having put so much emotional effort (throughout the book) into fighting for an independent Biafra, defeat by the Nigerians must have been devastating for our characters but I don't get this sense at all. Perhaps the war and famine had been so awful that they were simply glad it was over and that they could return to their homes, even if they had lost the war. I have to commend the author on bringing to life a long-forgotten (to the west) and little known part of Africa's history. But I don't know - it all felt a bit frustrating for me.
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Brilliant
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Cannot praise this book enough. I found myself on the train tears streaming down my face not wanting to get off at my stop. It is everything a good book should be. Wonderful characters some you love and some you hate. I hated reading the end as I didnt want it to be over. I fell in love with Ugwu and felt like I watched him grow up! I wont spoil it for you...Just read!
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dissapointed
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Apart from the insight about Biafra, this was a dissapointingly poor quality read. If the book had been shortened by half,then I think believe that it would have read better. Sadly, the story dialogue was stiff and I was not drawn into the saga.
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Disappointing
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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.
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A beautifully written novel taking us where no amount of reportage or photojournalism ever truly can
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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.
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