iDebate: Thandie Newton as Olanna in Half of A Yellow Sun

We were so excited to hear that Half of A Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was going to be made into a movie. The gist now is that Thandie Newton (who is African but not Nigerian) would be playing the lead role of Olanna. Some people have been saying that a Nollywood cast should be used rather than Hollywood big names. Is it more about local content or expertise or is it even a "business" decision? What do you think?

Screen Daily reports that producers Andrea Calderwood ("The Last King of Scotland," "Generation Kill") and Gail Egan ("Happy-Go-Lucky," "The Constant Gardener") have fully financed, thanks to help from both Nigerian private equity and the British Film Instute, their adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's bestselling novel "Half of a Yellow Sun." The novel, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007, is set during the Nigerian-Biafran War of 1967-1970, when the south of Nigeria attempted to secede and form their own country, the Republic of Biafra, and tracks a revolutionary university professor, his lover, her sister, a British ex-pat, and their houseboy, who are cought up in the conflict across the 1960s. Nigerian playwright Biyi Bandele, who's had a number of successes on the London stage, including his adaptation of seminal post-colonial novel "Things Fall Apart," is making his directorial debut with the project, and he's assembled quite an impressive cast, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Dominic Cooper and Thandie Newton all locked into the film. The trade don't have a firm word on who each is playing, but our guess is that Ejiofor will play university professor Odenigbo, Newton his lover, Olanna, and Cooper will play Richard, a British ex-pat in Nigeria to study.

It's a pretty terrific cast, not least a rare lead role for Ejiofor, one of our favorite working actors, while the presence of Cooper hot off "The Devil's Double" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" will undoubtedly help the film internationally. Filming starts in March, before Ejiofor segues to Steve McQueen's "Twelve Years A Slave," so we're unlikely to see this before 2013, but it certainly seems to be a film to keep an eye on.

Source: Indiewire

Bookaholic with Bella: Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

An epic story of love and civil war set in Nigeria during the 1960s, Half of a Yellow Sun recounts the lives of three characters caught up in events larger than themselves: Ugwu, a young houseboy working for an idealistic university professor; Olanna, the professor’s mistress; and Richard, a British expatriate in love with Olanna’s twin sister Kainene. Their relationships are thrown into jeopardy when Richard spends one drunken night with Olanna, and as the war escalates.

With Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie firmly establishes herself as a most powerful storyteller and humanist, “the 21^st century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” according to The Washington Post Book World. The book has won numerous awards and accolades worldwide, including the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007.

Coming soon: 'The Thing Around Your Neck' by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

From the prizewinning author of Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun twelve dazzling stories - her most intimate work to date - in which she turns her penetrating eye on the ties that bind men and women, parents and children, Nigeria and the United States.


In 'A Private Experience,' a medical student hides from a violent riot with a poor Muslim woman whose dignity and faith force her to confront the realities and fears she's been pushing away. In 'Tomorrow Is Too Far,' a woman unlocks the devastating secret that surrounds her brother's death. The young mother at the center of 'Imitation' finds her comfortable life in Philadelphia threatened when she learns that her husband has moved his mistress into their Lagos home. And the title story depicts the choking loneliness of a Nigerian girl who moves to an America that turns out to be nothing like the country she expected; though falling in love brings her desires nearly within reach, a death in her homeland forces her to reexamine them.


Searing and profound, suffused with beauty, sorrow, and longing, this collection is a resounding confirmation of Adichie's prodigious literary powers.

Read a partial review here

Have your say...

I was at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Yaba on Saturday for the PAGES event for the month of March. It was tagged: The World is Flat. Are you shaking your head in question of the title? Yes, it was the title that also nursed my decision to make it for the event, I wanted to know, how come again that the world is flat?

Okay for those who don’t know, here’s a little background into PAGES. It is a monthly event hosted by CCA with the aim of understanding our world and ourselves better through the arts. Usually, there is a convergence of art in diverse forms: painting, literature, map making, photography with the aim of  giving literary interpretation to the works on exhibition. The event had an ‘okay’ audience for an art event; to think that it was not featuring any of Nigeria’s young music artists (my opinion) that's what attracts 'Naija' youth, am I lying?

It was an opportunity to see the world from a new perspective and take brief lessons in architecture, cartography, history, literature  and also set me thinking about the process of writing.

Johanne, the curator of the exhibition introduced the theme of the exhibition and answered questions from a very inquisitive audience; there was a book reading and discussion from Onyeka Nwelue’s novel The Abyssinian Boy.

The the questions started sprouting from all corners: What is  the place of knowledge about a setting in the making of a work of literature? Where does reality stop and idealism begin? Does a writer need to have a perfect knowledge of the place that he/she is writing about? If yes, how was JK Rowlings able to write her best-selling Harry Potter series? If yes, how was Chimamanda Adichie able to pull off an Orange prize-winning Half of a Yellow Sun which is about the Nigerian civil war when she was not a part of the war? 

If no, how does a writer stay true to describing what a place is like at any point in time, bearing in mind that places change? If no, where is the place of creativity even when making fiction  out of reality?

What is your take?