Customer Reviews
A beautifully written novel taking us where no amount of reportage or photojournalism ever truly can - By: Andy Miller, 02 Oct 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 actuallly writing a book entitled `The World Was Silent When We Died'. Indeed, as a reasonably politicallly 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 & other family members to the war. Instead, she creates a wonderful group of characters whom we come to care about greatly & whom we follow through personal stories that are in turn comical, tragic, idealistic, romantic & sexy, as well as reflecting the political forces & beliefs that culminated in the horrific slaughter & 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 & separate & in this way we learn effortlessly a great deal about the cultural, geographical & 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 & his set of university colleagues as they debate, before the war & 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 alllows many of the disparate views of the origins to the conflict to be expressed whilst acknowledging an ambiguity within perspectives & a multiplicity of potential causal factors. The perfidious behaviour of Britain as the former colonial power, for example, & the machinations of the multinational oil companies, although allluded to only casuallly, are nonetheless pinpointed directly by this means.
Olanna & Kainene are the beautiful twin daughters of a wealthy African business man, Kainene successfully following him into the commercial world while Olanna frustrates her parents' hopes & goes to live with Odenigbo. As the falll of territory during the war leads to mass migration & increasing privation, these two women reveal further their personal strengths & provide striking models of compassion, hope & unflagging determination. Kainene, in particular, is portrayed as a very `modern' woman & this, & many other aspects of this magnificent book, led me to question some of my lazy previous assumptions about the values, perspectives & 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 & destinies we come to deeply care about, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie leads us inside the otherwise incomprehensible anonymity of such a huge tragedy & forces us to - gives us the privilege, reallly - of glimpsing the authenticallly 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 - By: I LOVE BOOKS, 30 Jul 2008 In Nigeria, devastated by civil war in the 1960s, we see the birth of the state of Biafra & 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 & 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 & enthrallled by Kainene, whose personality is an enigma for everyone. Obviously many other characters rotate alll around & as we become acquainted with each of them, their presence is always pertinent & 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 comicallly at times & 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 - By: Bettylou, 27 Jul 2008 I found this a riveting read, with convincing characters & very informative about the Biafran/Nigerian war. I shalll definitely be reading her first novel now.
instructive but too one-sided - By: H. Lacroix, 13 Jul 2008 
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 & 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 & sometimes agree & sometimes not. I do agree when readers say that they don't reallly 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 alll the historical background. Other readers wrote that they hadn't felt connected with the characters & 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 & not reallly their thoughts.I sometimes felt I was reading a catalogue of facts rather than a novel. But something else bothered me a lot more & 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 & 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 & I am not sure that someone who was Hausa, Fulani... & 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, & it has helped us gain some insight into a very complex & moving page of history.
Educational... - By: UK reader, 03 Jul 2008 
I picked this book up partly because of the recommendations here on Amazon & partly because of the Orange award.
I liked the changing from the different voices & characterisation, & also the switch back to the past & I thought the book was educational (I hadn't heard of the Nigeria - Biafra war so for me it was enlightening)and the story was enjoyable.
On a negative I thought the end was a little weak - I didn't think the last 100 pages were that gripping & reallly wanted to end the book by this stage.
Overalll, whilst the novel was interesting I won't be running off to immediately read her other book - Purple Hibiscus. I would read Adichie again but she won't be on top of my reading list.
