Half a Life

V.S. Naipaul

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English

Picador
25 March 2025

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Series: Picador Collection

In Half a Life we are introduced to the compelling figure of Willie Chandran. Springing from the unhappy union of a low-caste mother and a father constantly at odds with life, Willie is naively eager to find something that will place him both in and apart from the world. Drawn to England, and to the immigrant and bohemian communities of post-war London, it is only in his first experience of love that he finally senses the possibility of fulfilment.

In its humorous and sensitive vision of the half-lives quietly lived out at the centre of our world, V. S. Naipaul's graceful novel brings its own unique illumination to essential aspects of our shared history.

Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

'Parts are as sly and funny as anything Naipaul has written. Nobody who enjoys seeing English beautifully controlled should miss this novel' - John Carey, Sunday Times

By: V.S. Naipaul
Imprint: Picador
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 197mm, Width: 130mm, Spine: 15mm
Weight: 172g
ISBN: 9781035039098
ISBN 10: 1035039095
Series: Picador Collection
Pages: 240
Publication Date: 25 March 2025
Recommended Age: From 18 years
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.

Reviews for Half a Life

The best novel I have read this year . . . the prose is crystalline and seductively so – you hardly realize that you are consuming a work of genius until you are plunged deep into a dramatic story which stretches across three continents. -- Antonia Fraser, <i>The Irish Times</i> Brilliant . . . Writing with a degree of wit and subtlety beyond the grasp of most writers, Naipaul has built a bleak world of discomfort and yearning from which, paradoxically, the reader will not want to escape. * Daily Mail * Parts are as sly and funny as anything Naipaul has written. Nobody who enjoys seeing English beautifully controlled should miss this novel. -- John Carey, <i>The Sunday Times</i>