half of a yellow sun

the new novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, comes out in the US on September 15th.

Her first book, Purple Hibiscus, blew me away. So I'm anticipating this one with the eagerness I usually reserve for the openings of friends' new shows.

Excerpt which struck me, from a recent interview with Adichie in Britain's Financial Times:

For all Adichie's fondness for the US, which she compares to a "rich uncle" who gives her pocket money, she detects a certain blandness there in some of the responses to her work. She finds this less the case in Britain, where the knowledge of Nigeria - while hardly very deep or wide - is perhaps greater. In the US, she says, a little wistfully, she will always be considered an African writer, whereas in Britain she is more likely to be viewed simply as a writer.

Adichie sees the contrast partly in historical terms. Britain, which dismayed the Biafrans and many others by arming the Nigerian military government during the war, has far more colonial baggage. The plus side of this, says Adichie, is that there is "more to engage with and more to fight about, which is more fun. I prefer more colour," she says, "whether good or bad, to a certain extent."

An intriguing character in Half of a Yellow Sun is a needy young Englishman called Richard, who finds love and a cause in Biafra. Near the end, Richard, of whom Adichie says she is "very fond", lapses into sorrowful, impotent racism against a military officer whom he fears is a rival for his Igbo lover. I ask Adichie if this reflects a pessimism on her part that there is something forever racist in the white European mind and education. She laughs and talks around the subject a bit, ending up by outlining the idea - relevant also, she agrees, to some of the activities during last year's "Year of Africa" in Britain - that it is possible to simultaneously love something and condescend to it.

"I feel that is a way a lot of liberal whiteness looks at African blackness," she says. "I don't doubt the love . . . but I also often detect that there is something condescending about it."