10 beautiful quotes to celebrate Half of a Yellow Sun 10-yr anniversary

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie appeared at London’s Royal Festival Hall on Sunday 7 August to celebrate the 10th anniversary of her acclaimed novel Half of a Yellow Sun.

Interviewed by Ted Hodgkinson, she finally revealed her favourite characters in Half of a Yellow Sun and why she loved them. These quotes were curated from BuzzFeed.

On Half of a Yellow Sun:

“Half of a Yellow Sun is a novel, but for me it’s also a deeply felt statement about who we are.”

“I think this is a novel about belonging, about what it is to belong, in all different ways.”

“Writing the book I would just stop and cry, and that never happened to me before. And the reason that happened was because I knew I wasn’t just telling a story. I’d suddenly realise, this actually happened. I found that in that period I was inhabiting a kind of emotional space that I haven’t inhabited since, when writing.”

On Ugwu:

“I think of Ugwu as the soul of the novel, as the anchor. When I was thinking about this book, Ugwu was the character through whom I imagined the world of the book. As a writer I’m very interested in how writers come to the place where they feel comfortable enough to tell their story, and I wanted to track Ugwu’s journey to that.”

“Ugwu is me, in that Madame Bovary way, but almost in a more literal way. I don’t want to say his journey mirrors mine, because that’s not necessarily true, but also Ugwu is the character in the novel who on the outside is the least likely, but who I think internally – how did you put it? – sees feelingly, and I like to think that I do.”

On Olanna:

“Olanna’s trajectory, I think, was inspired by reading about women, but I was struck when researching by how little the stories of women were told, how rarely women’s stories were the centre of narratives about that period. And I would read something and there would sort of be a ‘by the way’ mention of what a woman had done.”

“I think Olanna might have decided to be the good one – you know, in the way that we have a sibling who’s a troublemaker. You then feel the responsibility to be good because you feel you have to make up for the troublemaker sibling. [laughs]”

On Richard:

“Because Richard is white and English he’s able to do certain things that Biafrans can’t, and he does them. But at the same time, I think it’s quite clear in the novel that it’s not his story to tell. It’s certainly something I feel very strongly about. So that’s where I slipped in the politics – you know, ‘We love you, but no.’ [laughs]”

“I’ve been very amused by how many men – English, white – at events, all very respectfully I have to say, have taken slight issues with Richard. [laughs] Actually, I remember a woman saying to me that she felt I had been malicious, and I said to her, you know, the only reason you think I’m being malicious is because you come from a tradition that expects white English men to be at the centre of everything.”

“I remember when I had what I like to call the breakthrough – when I actually realised, you know, Richard is me. So he’s white, he’s male, he’s English, all of that, but he’s human. I said to myself, He’s human. And that made it so easy.”

On conducting a research on Biafra:

“I knew for a long time that I would write a novel. I was waiting to be ready emotionally. And I think also, in a more practical way, I was waiting to accumulate the knowledge I needed, which meant I needed to read all the books I needed to read about that period.”

“I went out of my way to do a lot of research, to read everything I could find. But really it was the stories that my father told me that I think made me realise that I was ready to write the book.”

“I was struck when I was talking to my father, and some of the other people I spoke to, that they went to weddings in the middle of the war. My father would say, ‘And then we had to go to our friend’s wedding,’ and I remember thinking the first time he told me, Wedding? People found ways to hold on to things that make them human.”

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