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Half a Life
- Author
- V. S. Naipaul
- Narrator
- Neil Shah
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Publish Date
- 18 September 2018
- Run Time
- 7 hours 7 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
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 Portuguese 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.
Critics Review
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“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, Nobel Prize–winning author
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“As disquieting as anything [Naipaul] has ever written…His terse prose works, as always, to imply a world in a phrase.”
New York Times Book Review
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“One of those rare books that stands as both a small masterpiece in its own right and as a potent distillation of the author’s work to date.”
New York Times
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“Naipaul’s style is so frank it seems intimate, and the awful characters are studied and well crafted…When Naipaul talks, we listen.”
Atlantic
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“A masterpiece of implicitness…explicitly concerned with drawing out the metaphysical-private while keeping it embedded in society and history…The ironies in Half a Life wind like a fugue into infinity…Identity is an enigma…To make that sentiment breathe in the mouth of a living character, and then rise from the page with silent laughter, is a beautiful completion: the mark of a genius and a cause of unending delight.”
Los Angeles Times Book Review
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“As sly and funny as anything Naipaul has written…Nobody who enjoys seeing English beautifully controlled should miss this novel.”
Sunday Times (London)
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“A surprise and a pleasure…here, at last, is a work of pure imagination, though the themes are characteristic in their complex peculiarity…In sentences of great precision and balance, Naipaul reanimates the dilemmas of the late and post-colonial experience…He reminds us again of what a fine and unusual writer he is.”
Observer Review (London)
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“One of the world’s greatest living novelists…Naipaul has thankfully lost none of his grace, style, or storytelling power in this beautiful novel.”
Independent (London)
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“A troubling novel, genuinely moving…disturbing in all the right ways…A stunning book, three continents, three journeys, the evergreen themes of caste and class, of growing up.”
Miami Herald
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“May tell us more about the essential Naipaul than he has ever heretofore revealed…The work of a master who has rarely, if ever, written better.”
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- V. S. Naipaul
- Narrator
- Neil Shah
- Duration
- 7 hours 7 minutes
- Release Date
- 18 September 2018
- ISBN
- 9781538555095
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Blackstone Publishing
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary
Synopsis
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 Portuguese 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.
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