Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 2006 · overland

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's 2006 novel of the Nigerian civil war, told through twin sisters Olanna and Kainene, the professor Odenigbo, the houseboy Ugwu and the Englishman Richard. As the Republic of Biafra rises and is slowly strangled between 1967 and 1970, their charmed Nsukka world collapses into flight, hunger and bombardment, retreating from town to town as the enclave shrinks. A love story and an unflinching account of a war the world chose to forget.

1. 1
   Lagos

   Olanna leaves the wealth and glamour of her parents' Lagos to follow her lover, the radical professor Odenigbo.

2. 2
   Nsukka

   In the university town of Nsukka they build a charmed life of ideas and argument, with the houseboy Ugwu watching it all.

3. 3
   Kano

   Visiting relatives in the northern city of Kano, Olanna is caught in the anti-Igbo pogrom and flees south by train, past horrors she will never unsee.

4. 4
   Abba

   As Biafra secedes and the war comes, Nsukka falls; the family retreats to the village of Abba.

5. 5
   Umuahia

   Then to crowded Umuahia under constant air raids, married amid the sirens, learning to live on almost nothing.

6. 6
   Orlu

   And into the last shrinking pocket of Biafra near Orlu, where Kainene runs a refugee camp, until she crosses the lines for food one day and does not come back.