A heartbreaking and exquisitely written novel set in Nigeria during the 1960s, at the time of a vicious civil war in which a million people died and thousands were massacred in cold blood. The three main characters in the novel are swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. One is a young boy from a poor village who is employed at a university lecturer 's house. The other is a young middle-class woman, Olanna, who has to confront the reality of the massacre of her relatives. And the third is a white man, a writer who lives in Nigeria for no clear reason, and who falls in love with Olanna 's twin sister, a remote and enigmatic character. As these people 's lives intersect, they have to question their own responses to the unfolding political events.

This extraordinary novel is about Africa in a wider sense; about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race; and about the ways in which love can complicate all of these things

In 1960s Nigeria, a country blighted by civil war, three lives intersect.