Olana began to run toward the house. She stopped when she saw the bodies. Uncle Mbaezi lay face down in an ungainly twist, legs splayed. Something creamy white oozed through the large gash on the back of his head. Aunty Ifeka lay on the veranda. The cuts on her naked bodies were smaller, dotting her arms and legs like slightly parted red lips.

                Olana felt a watery queasiness in her bowels before numbness spread over her and stopped at her feet. Mohamed was dragging her, pulling her, his grasp hurting her arm. But she could not leave without Arize. Arize was due anytime. Arize needed to be close to a doctor.

                “Arize,” she said. “Arize is down the road.”

                The smoke was thickening around her so that she was not sure if the crowd of men drifting into the backyard were real or plumes of smoke, until she saw the shiny metal blades of their axes and machetes, the bloodstained caftans that flapped around their legs.

                From “Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

                This is one of the best novels written this century.  In the above snippet, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie depicts some of the heinous crimes that the Muslim majority committed against the nonbeliever Igbo minority in the north of Nigeria in 1967.  As a response to the massacre, the Igbo created an independent state in their homeland in the south, Biafra.  A civil war ensued. With outstanding prose, the author weaves the story of a family and that of the abhorrent conflict. Everyone fights to survive atrocities without ever losing hope of regaining the stolen happiness.

                                                                                                ****

                I wish all my friends and readers a Happy Thanksgiving.

                                                                                                Louis