Half a Life

A devastatingly moving and often very funny novel from a masterful voice. In a corner of India untouched by anti-colonial agitation Willie Chandran's father stood at odds with the world - aspiring to greatness while living the dreary life marked out for him by his ancestors. In an attempt to defy his past he lives with a low-caste woman, only to find himself at the mercy of his own fury. From this unhappy union the compelling character of Willie Chandran emerges: oddly like his father, naively eager to find something that will place him both in and apart from the world. Willie is drawn to England and the immigrant community of post-war London, its dingy West End clubs and sexual encounters. But it is his first experience of love that may bring him the fulfillment he so desperately seeks. His wife Ana leads him to her homeland in Portuguese Africa, whose inhabitants are uncertainly living out the last days of colonialism. Naipaul delineates the relationship between father and son with wonderful clarity and compassion; and the comic brilliance of the London scenes and penetrating descriptions of Africa are hard to beat.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Naipaul is a master of English prose and the prose of Half a Life is as clean and cold as a knife." - J M Coetzee