Shelfology Book Pairing

A Biomythography

by Audre Lorde

A new Penguin Vitae hardcover edition of Audre Lorde’s trailblazing biomythography that cemented the poet’s legacy as a leading voice in intersectional feminism and 20th century literature. In her 1982 genre-fluid memoir, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde reflects on how her identity was formed by her relationships with women throughout her life, from her early memories of her mother attempting to shield her from the racism and sexism ingrained in American society to the solidarity she found in lesbian communities in downtown New York in the 1950s and among women whom she worked beside. With candor and trenchant yet simple detail, Lorde paints an intimate portrait of her life, granting readers a window into the formative experiences of one of the greatest writers and feminist thinkers of the 20th century. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name will be the second Lorde title to be featured in the Penguin Vitae collection and will feature a new foreword.

A Novel

by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A masterly, haunting new novel from a writer heralded by The Washington Post Book World as “the 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe,” Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed. With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another. Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.