Half a Life - V.S. Naipaul

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, or V.S. Naipaul for short, was born, of Indian ancestry, in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England in 1950 where he spent four years at University College, Oxford, in 1954 he began to write and since then has pursued no other profession. He was knighted in 1990, and is Britain's only living Nobel laureate in literature, having been awarded the prize in October 2001. He has famously said that he has no competitors or rivals. He’s written 29 books, fiction and non-fiction; I read two of his books in the 1970s, ‘The Middle Passage, Impressions of Five Societies – British, French and Dutch – in the West Indies and South America’ ...  Read the complete review

Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul has released another book entitled Half a Life. He was awarded the Nobel Prize award for works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories. In addition to this prestigious and exclusive award, V.S. Naipaul has also been awarded the UK's most extravagant and worthy award, The Booker Prize for his 1971 piece, In A Free State. Half A Life is based in the 1950; it is created from a collection of Naipaul own personal experiences as a Trinidadian Indian moving to the white populated centre of London. As you can image, his relationship to the book is strong and the emotions and experiences that he projects through this work as ...  Read the complete review

HALF A LIFE is the latest novel of the Trinidadian author V.S. Naipaul, who was recently awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for works that ‘compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories’. (Naipaul was quoted as being surprised and honoured at receiving the prize, saying that ‘it is a great tribute to England, my home, and to India, home of my ancestors’ [while neglecting mention of Trinidad, his birthplace]). Naipaul also received the Booker Prize in 1971 for his book IN A FREE STATE, amongst other awards. As in many of his other novels, HALF A LIFE draws heavily from Naipaul’s personal experiences, in particular his experience ...  Read the complete review

From my knowledge of VS Naipaul's personal life 'Half A Life' seems autobiographical.Sir Vidia is a complex person.He was born and raised in Trinindad.He received his education in England.He is very patrician.Yet his writing is rooted in indic tendencies.Yet he claims no nationality as his own. To get to the book.As usual the sentences are short and pithy.That is Sir Vidia's hallmark.The story is about Willie Chandran named after William Somerset Maugham,the novelist.Willie's imaginative ways cause his father,an iconoclast in an indian hamlet to send him to England.Here he takes a degree and also assumes the company of men and women.He befriends a ...  Read the complete review