I started this because sometimes, you uncover an amazing novel a few years after its publication. Though it isn't hot off the presses, it becomes a must-read or a personal favourite.

The one I've just finished is Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, published in 2006. She's also the author of Purple Hibiscus (2003 - winner of a best first book award) and the 2009 short story collection That Thing Around Your Neck. Now, it's been a while so I don't remember if someone posted the title here and that's where I got it from. If it is: thank you! Just wow.

Half of a Yellow Sun follows several interconnected characters against the backdrop of the Biafran secession from Nigeria (1967 to 1970). Adichie makes the excellent choice of refusing ominiscient narration. Instead, as readers, we follow unfolding events only through the character's eyes, each in turn, as the point of view shifts from chapter to chapter. Only a few paragraphs taken from a novel one character is writing give additional global information. The effect is absorbing and powerful, as we live the conflict through each person observing it, getting to know and care for them all over time.

Here is the website for the book:
http://www.halfofayellowsun.com/

Here is a list of awards the book has won:
Anisfield-Wolf Book Award 2007 (Fiction category) joint winner with Martha Collins, for Blue Front)
PEN 'Beyond Margins' Award 2007 (joint winner with Ernest Hardy for his essay collection Blood
Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction 2007