In a Free State and Other Stories
V. S. NaipaulPublished1977
Pages246
Formatpaperback
PublisherPenguin Books
Synopsis
No writer has rendered our boundariless, post-colonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives.In the beginning it is just a car trip through Africa. Two English people--Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys, and Linda, a supercilious compound wife -- are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims. Alongside this Conradian tour de force are four incisive portraits of men seeking liberation far from home. By turns funny and terrifying, sorrowful and unsparing, In A Free State is Naipaul at his best.
Recommendations
Generating recommendations…
Our AI is preparing recommendations for In a Free State and Other Stories. This usually takes under a minute.
About V. S. Naipaul
V
V. S. Naipaul
1932–2018
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienation in the wider world, and his vigilant chronicles of life and travels. He published more than thirty books over fifty years. Naipaul's breakthrough novel *A House for Mr Biswas* was published in 1961. He won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In a *Free State,* and the Jerusalem Prize in 1983. In 1990, he was awarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago's highest national honour. He received a knighthood in Britain in 1990, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. Some of his other works include *The Guerillas* (1975), *The Middle Passage* (1962) *A Bend in the River* (1979), *Among the Believers* (1981), *The Enigma of Arrival* (1987), *India: A Million Mutinies Now* (1990), *Beyond Belief* (1998) and *Half a Life* (2001).
View author page