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Table of Contents
Summary of Half of a Yellow Sun Chapter by Chapter: Chapter 15
At the beginning of Chapter 15, the reader gets a sense of the food shortages taking place in Biafra.
Unlike when the refugees from the north first began to arrive, people are no longer donating food as they used too.
Odenigbo refuses to believe this, thinking that the donations are being misappropriated.
Tensions are high in Nsukka and there is talk of looming war. People begin to leave Nsukka, but Odenigbo and Olanna’s household stays put.
Ugwu’s aunt comes to inform him that his sister Anulika is soon to be married and that her wine-carrying ceremony date has been set.
Before this happens, the Nigerian army invades the Nsukka campus and Olanna, Odenigbo, Baby and Ugwu are forced to flee.
They flee to Abba, Odenigbo’s home town.
Summary of Half of a Yellow Sun Chapter by Chapter: Chapter 16
The Nigerian federal government has declared a “police action to bring the rebels to order”.
Kainene recommends that Richard gets his things from Nsukka (as well as Harrison) and brings them to Port Harcourt.
On his way to Nsukka he encounters a road block where he is instructed to return from whence he came because Nsukka is not safe.
He tells the men at the roadblock that he works at the university in Nsukka and wants to get his things and his houseboy.
When they suspect him of being an agent of the Nigerian government, he quickly counters in Igbo that he is Biafran and that he learned Igbo from his wife.
He returns to Port Harcourt.
In Port Harcourt, Richard and Kainene discuss the civil war. He is very much in support of the cause while she sees the war as an exercise in extortion by the military.
Summary Half of a Yellow Sun
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a novel set during the Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War), told through the intertwined lives of three major characters: Ugwu, a village boy who becomes a houseboy for a university professor; Olanna, the professor’s partner and daughter of a wealthy Nigerian; and Richard, a British writer who falls in love with Olanna’s twin sister.
The novel is structured in four parts that shift between the early 1960s and the late 1960s, showing the characters before and during the war. Here’s a chapter-by-chapter summary covering the major developments:
Part One (Early Sixties)
- Chapter 1: Ugwu arrives at Nsukka to work for Odenigbo, a mathematics professor. He is overwhelmed but eager to learn and is introduced to a world of intellectuals and political debates.
- Chapter 2: Olanna, Odenigbo’s partner, visits Nsukka. She’s a beautiful, educated woman who defies her upper-class background. Ugwu is fascinated by her.
- Chapter 3: We see Olanna’s life with her elite parents in Lagos. She declines a teaching job abroad and chooses to live with Odenigbo instead. There is tension between her choices and her family’s expectations.
- Chapter 4: Richard, a British man drawn to Igbo culture, becomes involved with Kainene, Olanna’s twin. He is shy but deeply attracted to her independence and sarcasm.
Part Two (Early Sixties Continued)
- Chapters 5–10: Odenigbo’s house becomes a hub for political discussions. Olanna discovers that Odenigbo had a child with a village girl, Amala. She is devastated but eventually forgives him. Meanwhile, the growing tension in Nigeria is reflected in ethnic and political clashes.
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