Facts and Fiction in Nigerian War Prose: Chinua Achebe's There Was a Country and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun

“Fact” is something actual as opposed to invented; something which is real. It is also information about a particular subject, especially actual condition and/or circumstances. It is a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occurred.

“Fiction” on the other hand is a literary work based on imagination and not necessarily on fact. It is a literary type using invented or imaginative writing instead of real facts, usually written as prose. Fictional writers invent their stories and use imaginary characters in their works of fiction. In support of this, M.H. Abram posits that:

Fiction is any literary narrative, whether in prose or verse which is invented instead of being an account of events that actually happened. In a narrower sense however, fiction denotes only narrative that are written in prose (the novel and short stories), and sometimes is used simply as a synonym for the novel. Literary prose narratives in which the fiction is to a prominent degree based on biographical, historical, or contemporary facts are often referred to by compound names such as “fictional biography”, the historical novel, and the non-fiction novel. (128).