Chimamanda Adichie (Author of Half of a Yellow Sun) talks about the Novel, 'umu Igbo' and the movie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer and author of the bestseller Half of a Yellow Sun. At 36, she is one of the best Nigerian writer, if not in Africa. Her novel Half of a Yellow Sun premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, the biggest in North America, in September. The Nigerian premiere is scheduled for early 2014. She has done so well for herself, the 'umu Igbos' and Nigeria as a whole. She is now featured on Osas eye blog's October issue of Profiling Nigerians.

Her second novel, "Half of a Yellow Sun", was awarded the prestigious British Orange Prize in 2007. The novel tells the story the Biafran war, which claimed nearly a million lives during the secession of the province of South East between 1967 and 1970.

Sold 800,000 copies not only in English and translated into 35 other languages.

"I chose not to get involved in the film, for my own sanity. This is a book which I am very proud of but, from an emotional point of view..."she says.

After seeing the movie, she said it was "beautiful" and "pretty faithful to the book" even though many parts of the book were not covered.

Chimamanda Adichie's grew up in Nsukka, South-East Nigeria, where her father was a professor at the university.

She was born seven years after the end of the Biafran war but the memory of the war has always been present in her family.

"My mother always said what happened before the war and my father constantly spoke of his own father, my grandfather, whom I never knew because he died in 1969 in a refugee camp" , she recalls.

"The war was still there. But I do not know the details of what had happened until I started reading about it."

"I think this is true for many people of my generation, especially the Igbos from families of former Biafra."

After the publication of the novel Adichie said she received testimonies of many people for whom the novel was "a gateway to their own historical point."

 "After reading the book, they went to ask their father, where were you in 1967?"