March 30, 2008

Harper Perennial
ISBN 0-00-72028-3
433pp. Rs595

The Biafran War took place from 1967-70, when the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria seceded from the rest of the country, following a series of brutal attacks by the (mainly Muslim) northern Tausa people. Left on their own by the rest of the world, the population of the newly-formed nation of Biafra fought with increasing desperation against the British-supplied Nigerian army, who were supported as well by the Russians, Americans and Europeans. Ultimately, Biafra was crushed, its poorly-equipped fighters routed, and the Igbo once again absorbed into the greater Nigerian state.

This novel chronicles events of the era, as experienced by several protagonists. Beautiful, western-educaed Olanna is in love with the firebrand revolutionary professor Odenigbo, who agitates for secession over drinks with his friends. Servant boy Ugwu, a village lad, looks on, gaining both an education and a hopeless desire for Olanna. Olanna’s sisiter Kainene is no revolutionary; she is comfortable with her rich parents’ habitual corruption and Anglophile ways, as well as her white lover Richard. Richard has come to Nigeria from Britain as a writer and art historian but soon finds himself caught up in the Biafran cause.

As war looms closer and then breaks over the lives of these characters, author Adichie shifts frequently in time and place, providing a view of events both panoramic and claustrophobic; the armies draw near, options become fewer, and the situation grows increasingly bleak, then wretched. The narration throughout is competent, if not spectacular, with few linguistic acrobatics, which might be just as well given the nature of the material. Still, the voice is often flat and uninteresting: ‘Olanna jumped each time she heard the thunder. She imagined another air raid, bombs rolling out of a plane and exploding in the compound before she and Odenigbo and Baby and Ugwu could reach the bunker down the street. Sometimes she imagined the bunker itself collapsing, squashing them all into mud.’ Mixed with the narrative is a bit of history; the author makes the point that Nigeria, like so many other countries in Africa and the Middle East, is a purely European construct whose boundaries ignore the reality of ethnic and geographical division. Given this, the resulting civil strife is hardly surprising. This is certainly an idea that needs airing.

Half of a Yellow Sun (the title refers to the symbol on the Biafran flag) is engaging enough, but hardly extraordinary. It has met with enormous success in the West. Why? As in so many successful books by non-white, non-western writers, there is a prominent white, western character —Richard — who acts as a go-between for reader and story. Richard doesn’t know much about what’s going on in Nigeria, so when he has things explained to him, the reader does too. Moreover, the violence of the Muslims is as brutal as it is inexplicable — hacking open pregnant women, for example — and one suspects that this is another reason why the novel has done so well. (It won the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK in 2006.) It’s impossible to justify murder and infanticide, but presumably there were grievances on both sides in this war. You wouldn’t know that from reading this book. — David Maine
 

Without Mercy
By Jack Higgins
Harper Collins Publishers
ISBN 0-00-720640-2
291pp. Rs600

The novel Without Mercy is a sequel to the author’s earlier novel entitled Dark Justice in which detective sergeant Hannah Bernstein of a US secret agency was seriously wounded by IRA mercenaries employed by Josef Belov — an ex-KGB man who has grown into a great magnate and then was secretly assassinated by US-UK secret agencies. Just as Hannah was starting to recover, a nurse of Irish origin employed at the hospital poisoned her to death. As generally portrayed by western novelists, the Soviet intend to disrupt the western world as much as possible by supporting all kinds of terrorism.

The story starts with the inquiry into the identity of the mastermind behind the assassination. This leads to a cat and mouse came leading between Russian and western agencies through various cities. In the mean time it is also revealed that an expert actor, Max Zubin, is to impersonate Belov — whose death is kept under wraps by the Soviets — in order that the signing of the Belov Protocol can be finalised. The Soviet government, in its time of crisis, had sold innumerable state assets to Belov whose enterprise had then exponentially grown worldwide and now, the entire assets of the Belov International were to be transferred to the Soviets through the signing of the Belov Protocol. This balancing of power is not welcomed by United States, the United Kingdom or even the United Nations. Thus joint plans were made to stop the signing of the protocol.

A day before the signing, the actor is successfully smuggled from Moscow into London. Thus the story ends on a happy note with the West emerging as the victor – so no surprise ending there.

The novel is divided into happenings in various cities and then subdivided into very small chapters which lead to interruptions in the continuity of the story. Readers have to refresh their memory frequently in order to recall earlier happenings in another location and link the incidents together.

In addition, there are numerous names of persons and places that continue to appear with each new chapter, so the need to refer to back to the story is felt frequently. Good storytellers introduce the cast of characters at the beginning of the story. This makes is much more convenient for the average reader to follow the plot.

The narrative is developed around the follow plot of Russia versus the West, and has a full dose of conspiracies and double crossings. As a whole, it could at best be considered a mediocre story by avid readers of the genre. — Shamim F Khalid