ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates, from a comparative perspective, the narration of the woes of women in wartime through the case studies of Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's Roses and Bullets and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun. The broad objective is to investigate the plight and survivalist tendencies of women in wartime as depicted in the two Nigerian war novels. Feminists share the view that women's oppression is tied to their sex. Nigerian novelists, including Adimora-Ezeigbo and Adichie, feel they have a calling to join hands with other creative artists to imaginatively depict the experiences of women during the civil war to show how the women coped with the pangs and pains of the war. Adichie's novel is full of women from all social classes, all strong-willed, all of them doing a great deal to survive or making efforts to improve their own lives: aged mothers keeping to the village, wealthy traders, hawkers, female lecturers, quiet housewives, and chatty neighbours.
