Half A Life

In a corner of India untouched by anti-colonial agitation Willy Chandran's father stood at odds with the world - aspiring to greatness whilst living out the dreary life marked out for him by his ancestors. In an attempt te, defy his past, tee marries as good as a low-caste woman only to find himself at the mercy of his own fury. From this unhappy union the utterly compelling character of Willy Chandran emerges, oddly like his father, naively eager to find something that will place him botte in and apart from the world. And so tee is drawn to England, to the immigrant community of postwar London, its dingy West End clubs, lonely pavements and sexual encounters, and even to the eccentric milieu of the English writer. But it is Willy's first experience of love that might bring him the fulfilment tee so desperately seeks. His wife Ana leads him to her home, a province of Portuguese Africa, a country populated by desperate businessmen and their frustrated wives all uncertainly living out the last days of colonialism. Half A Life is a devastating work of exceptional sensitivity, grace and humour. In its depiction of love fulfilled and thwarted, in its vision of the half-lives quietly lived out at the centre of out restless world, V S. Naipaul's new novel brings its own unique illumination to another aspect of our shared humanity.