Name: In a Free State: A Novel 1st Vintage International ed Edition
Author: V. S. Naipaul (Author)
ISBN: 9781400030552

In a Free State: A Novel 1st Vintage International ed Edition book cover

In a Free State: A Novel 1st Vintage International ed Edition

Author(s): V. S. Naipaul (Author)

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication Date: February 12, 2002
Edition: 1st Vintage International ed
Language: English
Print length: 256 pages
ISBN-10: 1400030552
ISBN-13: 9781400030552

Book Description

From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes a riveting tour de force that examines emigration, dislocation, and dread.

“The coolest literary eye and the most lucid prose we have.” —The New York Times Book Review

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.

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“V. S. Naipaul tells stories which show us ourselves and the reality we live in. His use of language is as precise as it is beautiful.” —The London Times

“A Tolstoyan spirit….The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“The coolest literary eye and the most lucid prose we have.” —The New York Times Book Review

From the Inside Flap

s 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 [117]– are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital [111]. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin s Uganda. [111-12, 120, 130-1, 150, 178, 220-40] 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

From the Back Cover

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” [117]– are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital [111]. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin’s Uganda. [111-12, 120, 130-1, 150, 178, 220-40] 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.

About the Author

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 died in 2018.

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