The Story Archive

Half a Life

V. S. Naipaul · 2001 CE · Novel · Caribbean · Contemporary

Willie Chandran, the son of a Brahmin who married beneath his caste, leaves India for a scholarship in London, where he drifts through bohemia on borrowed stories. He then follows a woman to an African colony, where he spends nearly two decades. The Nobel citation of 2001 followed within months, and the book is a short late statement of Naipaul's themes of displacement and half-lived lives.

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