Ugwu is a teenager from a village in Nigeria who goes to work as a houseboy for a university lecturer, Odenigbo. His aunt tells him that if he works hard, he will eat well. ‘You will even eat meat every day,’ she says. Food is everywhere and everything in Half of a Yellow Sun. Ugwu becomes a talented cook, while Harrison, the neighbouring houseboy, takes a snobbish pleasure from his knowledge of obscure European dishes like stuffed garden eggs and lemon meringue pie. Odenigbo cheats on his girlfriend, Olanna, after his mother feeds him witch-doctored rice. And a priest asks Olanna, who is unable to forgive her lover, ‘What will you do with the misery you have chosen? Will you eat misery?’

Food is a versatile metaphor in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s second novel, set before and during the Nigerian civil conflict of 1967–70. When the eastern provinces of Nigeria declared independence, the new state – Biafra – was starved into submission by the central government. The values and associations attached to different types of food, as well as its simple necessity, give Adichie a wide scope in which to work. Her talent is now beyond doubt, judging by this moving and accomplished follow-up to Purple Hibiscus, her enormously successful debut.

Purple Hibiscus was a coming-of-age story. But it also began to explain Nigeria, and to tell the country’s history. Half of a Yellow Sun continues this project explicitly. Focusing on the 1960s, it describes the arc of post-independence politics and post-colonial thought through tribal coups and massacres to civil war. Adichie tells the story by turns through the eyes of Ugwu, the impoverished houseboy, Richard, a nervous British ex-pat, and Olanna, the daughter of a chieftain. Writing from three disparate perspectives is a bold move by a young novelist, and she pulls it off with remarkable savvy and confidence. She did not live through this period herself, but as a Nigerian is naturally interested. So she employs similarly marginalised but nevertheless involved voices. Ugwu serves the rich and famous, gaining glimpses of the political and ideological turmoil of the times and providing his own insight based on the animistic traditions of his rural upbringing. Richard is naturally excluded by his race, but also symbolises the involvement of whites in Africa. He represents the colonialism of the past, combined with the humanitarian compassion of the future. Olanna, an intricate and exquisitely drawn character, is sophisticated yet primitive, snobbish yet empathetic, confident yet painfully withdrawn. She seems loath to belong to any tribal, ethnic, social or intellectual grouping. She is at times completely removed from reality, but at other times seems the very essence of life in Nigeria.

This combination of detachment and involvement in the voices of the narrators complements Adichie’s narrative style. Despite describing grotesque murders and passionate love affairs, she never overdoes it. For instance, the brutal rape and murder of one character is alluded to first, elliptically, in a news broadcast, and then assumed (but not mentioned) for twenty pages. Adichie lets the suspicion of horror take root first, and then allows it to sink in gradually. This kind of subtlety makes reading her an extraordinary, unsettling but ultimately satisfying experience.

Adichie is already the new voice of her country, and looks set to become the voice of Africa entire.