What triggered the trigger for Biafra independence? I'm asking you to do a couple hundred years of political science into a nutshell, but basically what was it that finally? I think lots of people would say different things. I mean I think the trigger for the massive support within Biafra for independence was the massacres of evil people in the North. I think that's really the reason that people banded together and supported the session. Lots of people have said that the reason Biafra wanted independence was because the Biafran leader was horribly ambitious and you know that it was really about his ambition, but then he had so much support among the educated class in Biafran. That's really because people felt that there was a strong anti-ebo sentiment, that it was that they just could no longer feel safe in Nigeria, as Nigerians. There's such enthusiasm for the cause. I think when one leaves so strongly in something and when that faith is a result of fear. I mean these people believed so much because they felt they've lost my cousins in the North, I've lost my brother and my land and this is one way where I will not lose anybody else, where I will be safe and because of that they believe so much in it. I mean this is a sort of concept of adjust cause, people like my father who was the university lecturer at the time and his friends, all the people who were intellectuals and lost questions of who are not easily sort of swept off by things. Intellectuals had rather than business people had put it together and it just seemed well too much to be true. Yeah, in retrospect of course, yes, but at the time I don't think they... You know when I think about it Biafra might have survived, but then one she even do along. I often think well yes maybe it was to be true. Where's your family now? My parents are in soccer just in the university town and my sister and my brother leaving Leedlos and I was sister who lives in the U.S. and Connecticut and my brother lives in London. So you've had a little family they ask for? Yes, just like the one in the book. Yes well, I don't know if you're not leaving with your brother in law, I hope that's... that got very confusing because everybody started to leave it with everybody else and that uh... Well I mean you're writing a book about killing and war and you sort of want to give the read a break at some point and remind them that these are human beings who do things to each other but even little war things get intense you know yeah but it would be don't you think? I think that when people are confronted with mortality in that sort of way and also I think that you have very little to do you can't go off to the theatre because there isn't a theatre then you might as well have sex and you know you then start to think about your neighbour and I like sex with that. And also I think that I just feel that sex is such a human thing and in this book I sort of wanted it to be a way which people come together in all London or in any world have a relationship that's starts to get free at some point and and then for them with that I saw sex then becomes a real by watching how they do or don't have sex we can tell so much about their relationship and you know my brother was conceived during the war I thought that was in England so he's going to be happy when that war has nothing else and he was a volunteer in the war which wasn't easy for my mother but well he I mean considering the number of babies who died in the effort in that period really he's awfully lucky to be alive at all he is and I yes my favourite character was the houseboy yeah he was just so darn sweet and well he was his sweet his his yeah his but his but character that I most that was easy as to right I think that I must take on to fight with but I didn't it's interesting like I did not show about world sweet I suppose in the beginning and and did you want to smack me when he thought he'd died and then he turned that he hadn't well yes I did I did actually it was like you know I remember my editor my my British editor Mitzi suggested she said oh you know we shouldn't do this and it wasn't really it wasn't sort of a technique it wasn't an artistic thing it was that many people in Biafra went through being told oh your son has died and then months later having the song walking and I read about this over and over and head stories about I felt this has to go in the book I want the reader to I want to try and get the reader to feel that because I can't imagine what it is to be like to mourn somebody and then to have them come back and it's you know lots of people my father told me stories about people so they're running away when somebody walking because they think oh you're a ghost and that sort of thing and I just really think it would have been difficult the book is half of a yellow sun novel I'm speaking with the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adici and half of a yellow sun published by Knopf Kanda