From the award-winning author of "Purple Hibiscus" comes this masterly, haunting new novel, in which Adichie recreates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafras impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria during the 1960s.In 1960's Nigeria, a country blighted by civil war, three lives intersect.  Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university lecturer.  Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor.  The third is Richard, a shy Englishman in thrall of Olanna's enigmatic twin sister.  When the shocking horror of the war engulfs them, their loyalties are severely tested as they are pulled apart and thrown together in ways that none of them imagined...