Half A Life 1st Edition Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul 9780330485166, 0330485164 instant download after payment.

V. S. Naipaul’s graceful novel is a humorous and sensitive vision of the half-lives quietly lived out at the centre of our world.

"Half a Life is a deeply discomforting, even dismaying book; but it is also a book of uncommon elegance, subtlety and intelligence."  -  Robert Hanks, Daily Telegraph

Half a Life introduces us 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.

"Naipaul's style is so frank it seems intimate, and the awful characters are studied and well crafted. Behind the matter-of-fact style is a cuttingly ironic view of human relations . . . When Naipaul talks, we listen."  -  Diane Mehta, The Atlantic Monthly

V. S. Naipaul is a novelist and travel writer. He studied at Oxford University, then moved to London to work for the BBC. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Enigma of Arrival, A Bend in the River (shortlisted for the 1979 Booker Prize), Half a Life (longlisted for the 2001 Booker Prize) and In a Free State, which won the 1971 Booker Prize. He was also shortlisted, for his entire body of work, for The Man Booker International Prize 2009. In 1990, Naipaul received a knighthood and in 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.