Half of a Yellow Sun

I've just read this powerful novel by a young Nigerian writer. The characters' middle-class affluence of the early sixties is contrasted with their situation in the war a few years later. I was too young to fully comprehend the horrors of the Biafran conflict at the time. This book brings home the unpredictability of life, the ease with which we humans descend into conflict and our remarkable inability to hang onto peace. The terrible events described in this book happened almost forty years ago: in the intervening years similar things have taken place in Vietnam, Rwanda, the Balkans, Iraq and many other lands.

On finishing this book I have renewed respect for my parents and grandparents who lived through wars which they did not know whether they would survive.

Peace is worth struggling for. We must resist the politicians who too readily sacrifice it.