Synopsis
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...
Details
07 November 2024240 pages
9781035039098Imprint: Picador
Reviews
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, The Irish Times
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, The Sunday Times
