Summary
V. S. Naipaul continues the semi-autobiographical story he began in HALF A LIFE (2001). Willie Chandran, born in India but living in Berlin, returns to his homeland as an activist, working on behalf of India's poor and lower-caste until he lands in prison. Released because he is a famous and valuable writer, Willie travels to England, gets involved in a ménage-à-trois, finds a job, but becomes increasingly disillusioned with the state of the Western world. A New York Times Notable Book for 2004.
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"This great writer's rhetorical and constructive mastery remain unimpaired."
-- Kirkus
"[Naipaul] is a modern master of the multiple ironies of resentment, the claustrophobia of the margins. In a world in which terrorism continually haunts the headlines, Naipaul's work is indispensable."
-- Publishers Weekly
"The sequel to HALF A LIFE..., it is a subtle if slender production, a novel that revisits the themes-exile, identity, the precariousness of civilization-that he's been grappling with over the past five decades....If Naipaul is earnest about his assertion that he's retiring from the enterprise of fiction...it would be a pity." -- James Atlas
-- New York Times Book Review
Bibliographic Details
Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 2005
Size: 5.25 x 8 inches
Weight: 0.5 pounds
Pages: 280
Publisher's Notes
In his early forties, Willie Chandran abandons his peripatetic lifestyle with the encouragement of his sister to join an underground movement in India, but seven years of revolutionary campaigns--and several years in jail--convince him to return to England, where he once again uncovers the fruit of another unexpected social revolution, in a new novel by the Nobel laureate author of Half a Life.
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