In a Free State

Description

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 1971 SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDEN MAN BOOKER PRIZE From Pulitzer Prize winner V.S. Naipaul, In A Free State is set in an imaginary state in Africa against a background of civil conflict. The book travels from America to London to Africa. The first third focuses on the fortunes of Santosh, a young Indian servant, at the mercy of this dreams, of his employers and of the countries in which he is plunged. It then moves into the world of expats in Africa, of government officers and radio people, attempting to understand the country they have found themselves in, to match their ideas to reality. And as always, in the background the threat of violence looms. The voices in this novel are breathtakingly vivid, the feelings of the characters portrayed with an intelligence and sensitivity that is rarely seen in contemporary writing. PRAISE FOR NAIPAUL "For sheer abundance of talent there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V. S. Naipaul. [He is] the world's writer, a master of language and perception." The New York Times Book Review "A Tolstoyan spirit.... The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist." John Updike "V. S. Naipaul has a substantial claim as a comic writer.... This humor, conducted throughout with the utmost stylistic quietude, is completely original." Kingsley Amis, The Spectator "Mr. Naipaul travels with the artist's eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning." Evelyn Waugh

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and most recently The Masque of Africa, and a collection of letters, Between a Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

A book of such lucid complexity and such genuine insight, so deft and deep, that it somehow manages to agitate, charm, amuse and excuse the reader all at the same pitch of experience -- Dennis Potter * The Times * Naipaul's travel writing is perhaps the most important body of work of its kind in the second half of the century -- Martin Amis