DOI: 10.36347/sjahss.2022.v10i04.002

Pages: 119-136

Almost half a century after it breaking out, the Biafra Civil war (1967-1970) has been and remains the focus of an abundant literary fresco collected under the caption of ‘Biafra literature’. It seems to beat the record of topicality of the Nigerian writers of the second and third generation who, as historians or hierophants of their Nation-building cause, keep alive and evoke in their works powerful memories of the Nigerian past which still haunt the lives of their contemporaries. The gist of this paper is to analyze the contextualization of Biafra by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of the Nigerian feminist leading figures, in her second published novel, Half of A Yellow Sun. Drawing from the New Historicism which helps not only to describe the past, but rather to bring back to memory a retrospective and coherent succession of selected facts to investigate the past, this study shows that in African literature, a political commitment grows out of a historical experience as the basis for the creation of a work of art. The exploration of the novel under consideration buttresses well this thought for Adichie re-visits socio-political and economic situation in Nigeria before that civil war, and onwards. The analysis of these historical features and the authoress’ rhetoric as well, clearly reveals Adichie’s political and ideological commitment to denounce the dramatic impact of the civil war on individuals in her homeland. Half of A Yellow Sun is really a chronicle of a Civil war the drawbacks of which continue to shape life in Nigeria.