The story was very compelling. I’ve known a few people who were personally affected by the Biafran war, and they reminded me very much of Holocaust survivors – one of them, a member of the Ijaw minority, spent the war in a concentration camp and saw many members of his family get killed. To the Igbo, the Biafran conflict was more than a war – it was a catastrophe that occupies a place in their identity similar to the place that the Holocaust occupies for many Jews. I can understand why someone of Adichie’s age, who was born seven years after the end of the war, would still write about it so often, just as some 20-year-old Jews still write Holocaust poems. That’s probably why I was holding back tears by the end of the story – all the emotions seemed very, very familiar.