| Half a Life Contributor(s): Naipaul, V. S. (Author) |
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ISBN: 037570728X ISBN-13: 9780375707285 Publisher: Vintage OUR PRICE: $13.50 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: October 2002 Annotation: In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul has produced his finest novel to date, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity. The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Historical - General - Fiction | Cultural Heritage |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Series: Vintage International |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.16" W x 7.96" (0.53 lbs) 224 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - African - Cultural Region - British Isles - Ethnic Orientation - Indian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul has produced his finest novel to date, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity. The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career. |