Return to Courting Clio

Reading Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun, I am struck by how much I am reminded of my dissertation -- Courting Clio. As in Turgenev and other Russian novels of the 1840s-50s, we have a set of interlocking love narratives that seem to embody the broader cultural-colonial context. The radical intellectual and the pretty, intellectual twin, the British guy and more homely but cunning and practical one. The disapproving parents, one set rich and corrupt, the other poor but conniving.. It all flows from the Russian template, perhaps as much Tolstoi as Turgenev. 

Admittedly none of the romantic pairings map the violent conflagration that serves as the novel's backdrop: the Biafran war of succession from Nigeria of 1967-1970. None except the road not traveled, Olanna's earlier near affair with Ibrahim from Kano.

But thus far, 60% of the way in, the novel really isn't about the war in any meaningful way. Yes we (or at least I) learn a fair amount about the Igbo -- who are like the Jews in Europe or the Chinese in Southeast Asia -- the mercantile people who thrive across cultural borders and are therefore resented and targeted by others (Hausa, Yoruba). We learn about all this and to some limited extent it is mapped by the romantic arc of the protagonists, but not so much.

In any event, it's going to be interesting to see how it all goes down.

Then of course there's the question of why I should care about whether my dissertation was right after so many years away from it. Though maybe that's obvious.