Half of a Yellow Sun

Nigeria during the 1960s; a time of vicious civil war in which a million people die and thousands are massacred in cold blood. Three people get swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer's house. Another is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. The third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna's sister, a remote and enigmatic character. As these people's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events... --back cover