Fictionalized account of Nigeria before, during, and after the Biafra/Nigerian war in the 1960s. Fantastic writing, story lines that pull you in, characters you yearn to know better.
Ugwu, a peasant recruited to be the houseboy of a professor (Odenigbo), guides us through most of the story, from joining the household astonished by the fact they ate meat every day, growing up with fantasies about the girl back in his village, becoming an integral part of the family with Olanna & Baby, conscripted into the army and surviving but haunted.
Odenigbo the professor whose fiery salons are so enjoyable pre-war. Evenings of discussion, food, drink. Books everywhere. Olanna the beautiful aristocratic Igbo woman who forgives her man's indiscretions and raises Baby as her own child. Olanna's twin sister, Kainene, disappears at the end, in the days right before the war ends, in a search for food on the black market. Kainene's lover, Richard Churchill, a white journalist trying fiercely to write a novel about the events unfolding before him, ends up searching for her in the post-war era.
Great writing, suggested by the wise Biblioracle.
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