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Half of a Yellow Sun – 2007 Winner

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s haunting novel, originally won the Women’s Prize for Fiction (then the Orange Prize) in 2007 and was also crowned ‘Winner of Winners’ from 25 years of Women’s Prize for Fiction winning books in 2021.

In 1960s Nigeria, a country blighted by civil war, three lives intersect.

Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s masterpiece, winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, is a novel about Africa in a wider sense: about the end of colonialism, ethnic allegiances, class and race – and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things.

"To hear my name announced was an utterly glorious experience. I couldn't wait to get off the stage and call my father!"

2007 Shortlist

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