History, Literary Re-Historicization and the Aftermath of War in Chinua Achebe’s There Was a Country and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun

Abstract

This article examines how Chinua Achebe’s memoir There Was a Country and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun, respectively, narrates and re-historicizes the Biafran War (1967-1970). More specifically, this article highlights the different ways in which each author questions the Nigerian Federal Government’s countenancing or active supports of ethnic rivalry and marginalization in relation to the Eastern part of the country which is the major cause of the war as stipulated by both authors. While Achebe’s book, his final one, is a memoir and Adichie’s is a novel, their views on this and other aspects of the war have much in common, and this connection is only one of the many between the two Igbo-born authors. The present discussion also establishes the connection between Achebe’s memoir on the Biafra war and Adichie’s literary re-historizing of the Nigerian nation and the Biafra War. Paramount in both Achebe’s and Adichie’s treatment of this war is the foregrounding and condemnation of the human brutality that led and defined the war. This paper posits that war is not necessary for any form of correction or peace and should not be used as a measure to effect changes in any society. It rather causes psychological trauma for those involved, and those who witnessed it are left with horrifying reminiscences which are derived from trauma. The paper concludes that these can be avoided and war should be discouraged at all cost.