Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun is a great, heart breaking novel; an evocation of four beautifully drawn, vivid characters whose lives are forever changed by the brutalities of the Biafran struggle, the Nigerian civil war. The opening few chapters draw us into the background against which the book's central characters must stand; the eventually disastrous effects of British colonialism, the contemptuous racism of the British ex pats, the depth and beauty of Igbo-Ukwu art, the enmity between the different peoples of Nigeria, the corruption, and the struggle for African identity, for self-determination and independence. This film replaces a superbly written, perfectly paced introduction with a single scene, that reduces one of the book's most complex meetings into two shots and a couple of lines of dialog. In short this film is so rushed, so much of a squeezed accordion, with no idea of what themes to lift from the page, that it renders the events confused, meaningless and, for those of us who gave read the book, entirely, unavoidably comical. It must go down as one of the worst cinematic adaptations of a book ever. How one could take such fabulous source material and produce such a hare-brained précis confounds me. This is a disgrace and an awful disservice to CNA. May Americanah fare better; Half of a Yellow Sun does not deserve this fate. Shame on this "film".
Review of Half of a Yellow Sun
