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Willie Chandran #1
Half a Life
NATIONAL BESTSELLER � In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, the Nobel Prize-winning author produced his finest novel, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity.
"A masterpiece." � Los Angeles Times Book Review
The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career.
"A masterpiece." � Los Angeles Times Book Review
The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
209 people are currently reading
3,229 people want to read
About the author
V.S. Naipaul
136books1,723followersV. S. Naipaul was a British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent known for his sharp, often controversial explorations of postcolonial societies, identity, and displacement. His works, which include both fiction and nonfiction, often depict themes of exile, cultural alienation, and the lingering effects of colonialism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 497 reviews
May 24, 2024
VS Naipaul is out of fashion now. Who cares about him? Well, I do. Somehow, I always felt Naipaul spoke for things which I cared about. Look, I would not have invited the guy for lunch. He was always an openly grouchy person, who proudly displayed his cruelty. But I always felt like he spoke for people like me. Most people furiously stick up for their favorite political party. I loyally stick up for my favorite writers on ŷ.
I always thought of Naipaul as a brilliant but bitter teacher trying to pass on some messages to his audience. I think he was writing for Indians. Who read his novels? I think middle class Indians and other great writers. I do not know a famous writer who has not said something nice about Naipaul. Everyone from Hunter S Thompson to Marlon James adored him.
Let me sell Naipaul to you guys. He was this really grouchy Indian from the Caribbean (his ancestors were bonded laborers over there) who had a problem with nearly everyone in the world. He hated his own people (“Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover."). He hated the Caribbean. He once said the post-war British were proud of being stupid and quite gloriously shat on the sexual mores of white working class British women in the sequel to this novel. He did like rednecks. He sympathized, with a few conditions, with Hindu nationalists. He wrote three books about his travels across the Islamic world, which were like a warning. He used to beat up his Argentinian mistress, which he admitted to his biographer.
Half a Life is a bitter novel. It speaks the truth about a phony and debilitating Hindu upbringing full of false choices and grandstanding to hide ones own mediocrity. It underscores the inadequacy of the early Indian immigrants of the second half of the 20th century to fit into British society. Naipaul often talked quite honestly about his own sexual rage and this novel is filled with the sexual impotence and longings of Willie Chandran, an Indian immigrant who is utterly lost in post world war England. His relationship with an African lady which takes him to Africa seems to have pissed off many reviewers of this book. But if you are an Indian, you know what this man writes is the truth. The inadequacy, desolation and precariousness of our lives wherever we go, is perfectly described by Naipaul.
I sort of understand Indians and people from other parts of the world who hate Naipaul. Here is a writer who took more risks than Bruce Willis holding up that banner in Die Hard 3. It is almost as if Naipaul wanted to be hated. He was not even like Michel Houellebecq or someone who granted some solace with the sex scenes in his novels. Naipaul, simply wanted to write the truth which we all long to escape from but consume secretly :) Christopher Hitchens once described Naipaul as "unassailable". That is the perfect one word description of Naipaul's artistic intent. Yes, here is one writer who never played any games and wrote what he really felt. Nobody cares about him now. It is sad, but not surprising.
I always thought of Naipaul as a brilliant but bitter teacher trying to pass on some messages to his audience. I think he was writing for Indians. Who read his novels? I think middle class Indians and other great writers. I do not know a famous writer who has not said something nice about Naipaul. Everyone from Hunter S Thompson to Marlon James adored him.
Let me sell Naipaul to you guys. He was this really grouchy Indian from the Caribbean (his ancestors were bonded laborers over there) who had a problem with nearly everyone in the world. He hated his own people (“Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate, mostly, beside the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover."). He hated the Caribbean. He once said the post-war British were proud of being stupid and quite gloriously shat on the sexual mores of white working class British women in the sequel to this novel. He did like rednecks. He sympathized, with a few conditions, with Hindu nationalists. He wrote three books about his travels across the Islamic world, which were like a warning. He used to beat up his Argentinian mistress, which he admitted to his biographer.
Half a Life is a bitter novel. It speaks the truth about a phony and debilitating Hindu upbringing full of false choices and grandstanding to hide ones own mediocrity. It underscores the inadequacy of the early Indian immigrants of the second half of the 20th century to fit into British society. Naipaul often talked quite honestly about his own sexual rage and this novel is filled with the sexual impotence and longings of Willie Chandran, an Indian immigrant who is utterly lost in post world war England. His relationship with an African lady which takes him to Africa seems to have pissed off many reviewers of this book. But if you are an Indian, you know what this man writes is the truth. The inadequacy, desolation and precariousness of our lives wherever we go, is perfectly described by Naipaul.
I sort of understand Indians and people from other parts of the world who hate Naipaul. Here is a writer who took more risks than Bruce Willis holding up that banner in Die Hard 3. It is almost as if Naipaul wanted to be hated. He was not even like Michel Houellebecq or someone who granted some solace with the sex scenes in his novels. Naipaul, simply wanted to write the truth which we all long to escape from but consume secretly :) Christopher Hitchens once described Naipaul as "unassailable". That is the perfect one word description of Naipaul's artistic intent. Yes, here is one writer who never played any games and wrote what he really felt. Nobody cares about him now. It is sad, but not surprising.
January 31, 2025
India
“I was doing penance for something I had done, and I was living as a mendicant in the outer courtyard of the big temple. I had also taken a vow of silence. This had won me a certain amount of local respect, even renown. People would come to look at me being silent and some would bring me gifts. I foolishly gave up English education in response to the mahatma's call and unfitted myself for life, while watching my friends and enemies growing in prosperity and regard.�
England
“He turned away and began to walk down one of the paths beside Bayswater Road. He walked without seeing, thinking of the hopelessness of home and his own nebulous present. All at once, in the most magical way, he was lifted out of himself. He saw, walking towards him on the path, a man famous beyond imagining, and now casual and solitary and grand among the afternoon strollers. It was Krishna Menon, the close friend of Mr. Nehru, and India's spokesman in international forums.�
Africa
"I am not staying here. I am leaving.� That was how he thought during the slow further journey in a small coasting ship to the northern province closer now to the land, closer to the frightening mouths and wetlands of very wide rivers, quiet and empty, mud and water mixing in great slow swirls of green and brown. Those were the rivers that barred any road or land route to the north. They got off at last at a little low-built concrete town, grey and ochre and fading white, with straight streets.�
**
Willie Chandran asks his father why his middle name is Somerset and the father begins the story of how he was born. The father was enrolled in an English language school and engaged to the principal’s daughter when he became motivated by the Mahatma to practice noncooperation. He notices an outcaste woman in the class and tries to socialize with her in accordance with Gandhi’s teachings against untouchability. This occurs after the 1930 Salt March in an unnamed maharaja state. His sitting with her at a tea shop after classes provokes her activist uncle to organize protests against caste oppression. Willie’s father was from a priestly caste family of high standing who ran the temple.
Concerned for her safety he arranges a place for her to live in a sculpture studio storeroom. At this point they both have left school. When the grandfather and the principal become aware of what’s happened he takes an oath of celibacy and penitence, moving out of the house to the temple where he practices a vow of silence, living off alms. The principal is hosting the foreign writer Somerset Maugham who traveled to ashrams and temples in 1938 and explains the meaning of the mendicant. He becomes famous in a guidebook and later in a Maugham novel. His celibacy vow ultimately fails and she becomes pregnant with Willie. Now living together in a house he is absorbed with self doubt and regrets.
After hearing this tale Willie tells his father that he despises him. As a boy he has a sister Sarojini, whom the father hopes to marry off to a foreigner, a mirror image of his wife. They attend a missionary school where Willie writes allegories of persecuted Dalits and evil Brahmins. He goes to London at age 20 in the 1950’s, sponsored by a member of the House of Lords, similar to Naipaul’s scholarship at Oxford paid for by the government of Trinidad at around the same time. Willie finds he learned little of the world at the missionary school and meets other foreign scholarship students, one from Jamaica who has a white girlfriend, as Naipaul did. Willie wastes no time contriving to cheat with her.
Willie gets a part time job writing bits for the BBC, where Naipaul had once worked as a presenter. He meets a legal aid lawyer who is knowledgeable about literature. When he reads Willie’s writing he gives him sage advice which leads to the publication of a short story book and literary contacts. In the midst of London riots he receives a fan letter from a London student from Mozambique, a Portugese colony. They meet and he is immediately attracted to the mixed African woman named Ana. London had taught him to accept a range of people, unlike a caste system which determines your station at birth. There are echoes of his father and mother’s union and the folly of innate class distinctions.
Faced with graduation, no prospects and in love with Ana he asks to go with her to Africa. His younger sister Sarojini works with Che Guevara in Cuba while berating him to press for socialist causes. She had married a German who lives in Berlin. Naipaul had visited and traveled in East Africa in the 70’s. When Willie arrives they drive off into the bush to a farmhouse where he doesn’t want to stay but spends the next eighteen years until he tires of living in the backwater colony. There are worries of a native insurrection, as had happened in Angola in a most grisly way. The whites put on European airs in the country. Finally Willie leaves and joins his sister and her husband in Berlin.
As a non-practicing Hindu V S Naipaul knew much about the faith even though he visited India only as a grown man and famous writer. He holds the dubious distinction of his first travelogue in a trilogy being banned by the government. This 2001 novel was published the year he received the Nobel Prize. There is a 2004 sequel ‘Magic Seeds� which picks up where ‘Half a Life� ends, with Willie in Berlin. As with many of Naipaul novels it is a master class in how to transform your personal life experiences into fiction by adding a twist here and a stretch there. As Naipaul once said “Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.� This is a classic Naipaul novel, no doubt about it.
“I was doing penance for something I had done, and I was living as a mendicant in the outer courtyard of the big temple. I had also taken a vow of silence. This had won me a certain amount of local respect, even renown. People would come to look at me being silent and some would bring me gifts. I foolishly gave up English education in response to the mahatma's call and unfitted myself for life, while watching my friends and enemies growing in prosperity and regard.�
England
“He turned away and began to walk down one of the paths beside Bayswater Road. He walked without seeing, thinking of the hopelessness of home and his own nebulous present. All at once, in the most magical way, he was lifted out of himself. He saw, walking towards him on the path, a man famous beyond imagining, and now casual and solitary and grand among the afternoon strollers. It was Krishna Menon, the close friend of Mr. Nehru, and India's spokesman in international forums.�
Africa
"I am not staying here. I am leaving.� That was how he thought during the slow further journey in a small coasting ship to the northern province closer now to the land, closer to the frightening mouths and wetlands of very wide rivers, quiet and empty, mud and water mixing in great slow swirls of green and brown. Those were the rivers that barred any road or land route to the north. They got off at last at a little low-built concrete town, grey and ochre and fading white, with straight streets.�
**
Willie Chandran asks his father why his middle name is Somerset and the father begins the story of how he was born. The father was enrolled in an English language school and engaged to the principal’s daughter when he became motivated by the Mahatma to practice noncooperation. He notices an outcaste woman in the class and tries to socialize with her in accordance with Gandhi’s teachings against untouchability. This occurs after the 1930 Salt March in an unnamed maharaja state. His sitting with her at a tea shop after classes provokes her activist uncle to organize protests against caste oppression. Willie’s father was from a priestly caste family of high standing who ran the temple.
Concerned for her safety he arranges a place for her to live in a sculpture studio storeroom. At this point they both have left school. When the grandfather and the principal become aware of what’s happened he takes an oath of celibacy and penitence, moving out of the house to the temple where he practices a vow of silence, living off alms. The principal is hosting the foreign writer Somerset Maugham who traveled to ashrams and temples in 1938 and explains the meaning of the mendicant. He becomes famous in a guidebook and later in a Maugham novel. His celibacy vow ultimately fails and she becomes pregnant with Willie. Now living together in a house he is absorbed with self doubt and regrets.
After hearing this tale Willie tells his father that he despises him. As a boy he has a sister Sarojini, whom the father hopes to marry off to a foreigner, a mirror image of his wife. They attend a missionary school where Willie writes allegories of persecuted Dalits and evil Brahmins. He goes to London at age 20 in the 1950’s, sponsored by a member of the House of Lords, similar to Naipaul’s scholarship at Oxford paid for by the government of Trinidad at around the same time. Willie finds he learned little of the world at the missionary school and meets other foreign scholarship students, one from Jamaica who has a white girlfriend, as Naipaul did. Willie wastes no time contriving to cheat with her.
Willie gets a part time job writing bits for the BBC, where Naipaul had once worked as a presenter. He meets a legal aid lawyer who is knowledgeable about literature. When he reads Willie’s writing he gives him sage advice which leads to the publication of a short story book and literary contacts. In the midst of London riots he receives a fan letter from a London student from Mozambique, a Portugese colony. They meet and he is immediately attracted to the mixed African woman named Ana. London had taught him to accept a range of people, unlike a caste system which determines your station at birth. There are echoes of his father and mother’s union and the folly of innate class distinctions.
Faced with graduation, no prospects and in love with Ana he asks to go with her to Africa. His younger sister Sarojini works with Che Guevara in Cuba while berating him to press for socialist causes. She had married a German who lives in Berlin. Naipaul had visited and traveled in East Africa in the 70’s. When Willie arrives they drive off into the bush to a farmhouse where he doesn’t want to stay but spends the next eighteen years until he tires of living in the backwater colony. There are worries of a native insurrection, as had happened in Angola in a most grisly way. The whites put on European airs in the country. Finally Willie leaves and joins his sister and her husband in Berlin.
As a non-practicing Hindu V S Naipaul knew much about the faith even though he visited India only as a grown man and famous writer. He holds the dubious distinction of his first travelogue in a trilogy being banned by the government. This 2001 novel was published the year he received the Nobel Prize. There is a 2004 sequel ‘Magic Seeds� which picks up where ‘Half a Life� ends, with Willie in Berlin. As with many of Naipaul novels it is a master class in how to transform your personal life experiences into fiction by adding a twist here and a stretch there. As Naipaul once said “Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned. But fiction never lies.� This is a classic Naipaul novel, no doubt about it.
July 26, 2007
It does what it does well and not much else. Not a great way to explain it but if you read it you will understand. We follow the exceptionally uneventful life of Willie as he tries to discover himself and find a path to walk down. I found him to be spineless and became quite bored watching him float through life being led by his lust most of the time like so many male characters in so many other(better written) books. But then, the language reflects his life, nothing much exciting going on. Having at this time not read any other VS Naipaul I’m not sure if the straightforward prose is specific to this book or just how he writes, but at times it felt like it was written by a teenager. But as mentioned this matches the dull life of the main character. He marries the first woman to show him attention and I thought something was due to happen when they moved to Africa as the country went through some big changes as he lived there but these things seemed to happen on the outside and didn’t affect his life very much, he was too busy being led on by his crotch to notice much else. The life of his sister sounded a much better story and she seemed a better character but then the book would have been something completely different. Willie does live a ‘half life� but it’s his own doing due to just floating through it with no direction or focus. Eventually he realizes that his life has been a waste of time but by then it’s too late. I’ll let you read something else and give you the main message; live your life now before it’s too late.
From the inside cover ‘…a devastating work of exceptional sensitivity…� not sure who stayed up all night writing that but I was not devastated in the slightest.
At the end of the day there are better books about the struggle to find a ‘purpose� in one’s life.
From the inside cover ‘…a devastating work of exceptional sensitivity…� not sure who stayed up all night writing that but I was not devastated in the slightest.
At the end of the day there are better books about the struggle to find a ‘purpose� in one’s life.
May 29, 2022
يقول جبران" لا تعش نصف حياة..النصف هو حياة لم تعشها وكلمة لم تقلها وحب لم تصل إليه
رواية للكاتب البريطاني الهندي الأصل ڨي إس نايبول .. رواية أمكنة وثقافات مختلفة
تدور أحداثها في منتصف القرن العشرين فترة الكولونيالية وما بعدها
يرحل ويلي تشاندران من بلده الهند في محاولة للبحث عن ذاته وهويته وحياته الحقيقية
ينتقل من الهند إلى بريطانيا ثم إلى مستعمرة برتغالية في افريقيا
يحمل إرث نشأته الذي يرفضه ويعيش تبعا لعادات وثقافات وعلاقات مختلفة تماما
وفي النهاية وبعد سنوات طويلة يُدرك أخيرا انه لم يعش سوى نصف حياة
أجاد نايبول رسم شخصية بطل روايته ما بين الاغتراب واللامبالاة والانقياد
رواية للكاتب البريطاني الهندي الأصل ڨي إس نايبول .. رواية أمكنة وثقافات مختلفة
تدور أحداثها في منتصف القرن العشرين فترة الكولونيالية وما بعدها
يرحل ويلي تشاندران من بلده الهند في محاولة للبحث عن ذاته وهويته وحياته الحقيقية
ينتقل من الهند إلى بريطانيا ثم إلى مستعمرة برتغالية في افريقيا
يحمل إرث نشأته الذي يرفضه ويعيش تبعا لعادات وثقافات وعلاقات مختلفة تماما
وفي النهاية وبعد سنوات طويلة يُدرك أخيرا انه لم يعش سوى نصف حياة
أجاد نايبول رسم شخصية بطل روايته ما بين الاغتراب واللامبالاة والانقياد
June 11, 2024
В русском переводе роман Нобелевского лауреата сэра Видиадхара Найпола "Half a Life" переведен, как "Полужизнь", что может быть истолковано, как не совсем полная жизнь, жизнь вполсилы, что по контексту подходит, но всё-таки я приверженец точных переводов.
С возрастающими миграционными тенденциями современного мира роман будет получать все более актуальное звучание.
Первая часть романа описывает детство героя Вилли Сомерсета Чадрана, второе имя которого было дано ему в честь великого английского писателя Сомерсета Моэма, с которым встречался его отец во время поездки писателя в Индию, и историю женитьбы его отца, представителя касты браминов на девушке из низших каст. Вилли рвется из Индии, все равно куда - хоть в Канаду, хоть в Англию, лишь бы не оставаться в своей стране. Движущей силой его душевных порывов было уйти, он пошел учиться на учителя, которым не собирался становиться. Он знает, чего он не хочет, но не знает, чего он хочет. Человек, не знающий куда и зачем он стремится, придет туда, куда ему не нужно. Вторая часть описывает его учебу в Англии и последующий переезд в Африку.
Основная проблематика романа лежит в плоскости самоидентификации героя, который утрачивает свои культурные корни, тем самым получая травму "бездомности", когда никакая страна не является родной. Дело доходит до того, что он осознает, что забывает языки, на которых он говорил, и это при том, что он писатель. Конечно, не все мигранты таковы. Основная их масса всё-таки имеет цели, к которым стремятся. Ещё одну проблематику, которую поднимает писатель - это вопросы сексуального воспитания. Мне совсем не понравились мысли Чадрана о "свободе" африканских девочек-подростков, начинающих половую жизнь с приходом первых месячных.
Чадран - воплощение инфантильности. Он винит всех, особенно родителей, но ничего не делает сам. Его мир настолько узок и беден впечатлениями, наблюдениями, мыслями, что он пишет свои рассказы, используя кинематографические сюжеты и перекладывая на индийскую почву. Он выдумывает свое прошлое, чтобы лучше приспособиться. В Африке он сталкивается со строгой расовой иерархией, которая своей многоступенчатостью напоминает кастовую иерархию в Индии. 18 лет он проводит в Африке на попечении своей жены Аны, а когда осознает никчемность своей жизни там, он находит новую опору, на которой можно паразитировать - свою сестру в Германии, к которой переезжает, бросив жену.
Герой к сорока годам осознает, что прожил половину жизни, но только ли жизнь ли то была? Полужизнь. (Логику отличного от оригинала перевода понять можно). И значимость этого наблюдения Найпола за человеком, "вырванного с корнем" из родной среды, но не прижившегося нигде и болтающегося по миру, невозможно переоценить.
С возрастающими миграционными тенденциями современного мира роман будет получать все более актуальное звучание.
Первая часть романа описывает детство героя Вилли Сомерсета Чадрана, второе имя которого было дано ему в честь великого английского писателя Сомерсета Моэма, с которым встречался его отец во время поездки писателя в Индию, и историю женитьбы его отца, представителя касты браминов на девушке из низших каст. Вилли рвется из Индии, все равно куда - хоть в Канаду, хоть в Англию, лишь бы не оставаться в своей стране. Движущей силой его душевных порывов было уйти, он пошел учиться на учителя, которым не собирался становиться. Он знает, чего он не хочет, но не знает, чего он хочет. Человек, не знающий куда и зачем он стремится, придет туда, куда ему не нужно. Вторая часть описывает его учебу в Англии и последующий переезд в Африку.
Основная проблематика романа лежит в плоскости самоидентификации героя, который утрачивает свои культурные корни, тем самым получая травму "бездомности", когда никакая страна не является родной. Дело доходит до того, что он осознает, что забывает языки, на которых он говорил, и это при том, что он писатель. Конечно, не все мигранты таковы. Основная их масса всё-таки имеет цели, к которым стремятся. Ещё одну проблематику, которую поднимает писатель - это вопросы сексуального воспитания. Мне совсем не понравились мысли Чадрана о "свободе" африканских девочек-подростков, начинающих половую жизнь с приходом первых месячных.
Чадран - воплощение инфантильности. Он винит всех, особенно родителей, но ничего не делает сам. Его мир настолько узок и беден впечатлениями, наблюдениями, мыслями, что он пишет свои рассказы, используя кинематографические сюжеты и перекладывая на индийскую почву. Он выдумывает свое прошлое, чтобы лучше приспособиться. В Африке он сталкивается со строгой расовой иерархией, которая своей многоступенчатостью напоминает кастовую иерархию в Индии. 18 лет он проводит в Африке на попечении своей жены Аны, а когда осознает никчемность своей жизни там, он находит новую опору, на которой можно паразитировать - свою сестру в Германии, к которой переезжает, бросив жену.
Герой к сорока годам осознает, что прожил половину жизни, но только ли жизнь ли то была? Полужизнь. (Логику отличного от оригинала перевода понять можно). И значимость этого наблюдения Найпола за человеком, "вырванного с корнем" из родной среды, но не прижившегося нигде и болтающегося по миру, невозможно переоценить.
August 17, 2018
لم تكن علاقتي بأبي جيدة في أي فترة من فترات حياتي . وعلى الرغم من ذلك لم أحمل له أي ضغينة قط.
ذكرتني هذه الرواية به . بالتحديد بيومِ لي معه . وأيامي مع أبي معدودات . لحصرها أصابع اليد الواحدة تكفي وتزيد. لم نكن أبدا أصدقاء ولم يسع أي منا إلى ذلك . على أي حال بتُ أعتقد أن أي أب في نظر أبنائه هو شئ زائد عن الحد . طبعا الى ان يموت .تعود هذه الذكرى إلى زمن لشد ما يحزنني أنه يبدو الأن مغرقا في القدم .
لا أعلم كيف ورطت نفسي في ما ورطت أبي فيه .قضية سياسية غريبة وغير مفهومة جرت أقدامنا إلى الفصل من الكلية . كان على أبي والحال كذلك أن يتدخل . لم أحسب أن بإمكانه أن يغير من الأمر شئ . لكن الأمور جرت بشكل جيد جدا لم أتتوقعه .
تبقى أن يأت لمقابلة عميد الكلية .
كل ما أذكره عن هذا اليوم نتف غير مجتمعة . أكثر ما يميزه كان برودة الأجواء بشكل غير عادي . وأن أبي الذي عودنا على قسوته وحدة مزاجه كان رائق جدا وأحن مايكون . بدا متفهما لطبيعة المشكلة التي لم أفهمها أنا إلى الأن . كان ذلك منذ أكثر من 8 سنوات .
غريب هذا الزمن .
وغريبة هذه الحياة .
كل ما كنت أفعله هو محاولة المرور بهذه الأوقات العصيبة إلى أقرب بر أمان . أن أعبر بأبي هذا الموقف المحرج . عاقدا العزم على ألا يتكرر كل هذا الهراء أبدا .
إستقبلته من أول الشارع ثم تتلاشى الذكرى . بعد ذلك أراه يعبر معي من باب الكلية بابتسامة غريبة وكأنما هو من أبطال زمن قديم سقط فجأة في زمن الأقزام . رمق الأرجاء بنظرة شفقة ثم إلتفت إلي إلتفاتته الخفيفة
قال ممازحا :
الأن عرفت السر . ما عاد الأمر غريبا . أنت ليس لديك حب هنا . ففضلا عن وجودك في نصف كلية لديك هنا أنصاف فتيات .
ابتسمت .
قلت : لدي هنا نصف حياة يا أبي ..
**
تشكل رواية نصف حياة الصادرة عام 2000 للروائي الترينيدادي متععد الهويات ف.س نايبول ـ في رأي ـ زورة الإبداعي السردي عند هذا الأديب المتفرد على الرغم من أني لم أقرأه له ـ حتى الأن ـ سوى شارع ميجيل مما يجعل شهادة مثل هذه مجروحة تماما لكن سمات أدب هذا الأديب تبدو هنا جلية كأروع ما يكون .
في هذا العمل يصوغ نايبول بقلم لماح نصف حياة لأبطاله شديدي الغرابة . فعبر الفكاهة المحببة للنفس تبرز مرارة الخيبة ووهم الطموح الانساني اذ يصطدم بعقبة الواقع الصلد ، فتعلو نغمة الحزن على ما عاداها .يبدو هنا كل شيئ وكأنما جبل من حزن ، يبحث نايبول عبر هذا العمل عن اجابة للسؤال الشهير : ما هو الانسان فيتعمق في رحلة الابن وابيه ليخرج بمحاولة لاستبطان ماهية الانسان .. الذات والمجتمع . ما الذي ينبغي أن يفعله المرء في عالم استعماري تحاول كل ثقافة ان تفرض نفسها بالقوة على ما سواها فتنهزم روح الانسان وتنتصر الكراهية.
ملمح أخر للرواية النايبولية يتضح هنا . أفريقيا .. تلك القارة التي يلفها الظلام والتي عبثت بها أياد كل مستعمر ، كل من هب ودب استقطع منها قطعة له فما عاد لافريقيا من هوية سوى العنصرية .
النصف الأول من هذا العمل وخصوصا قصة حياة الأب جائت كشيئ حالم لم أعهد مثيله في الأدب . خفة تنضح بالفكاهة . كل جملة وردت هنا جائت وكأنما هي رواية عبقرية مستقلة بذاتها .. إستمرت هذه الخفة حتى بعدما انتهى الأب من قصتة الجميلة لقصة ابنه كذلك إلى حد اللحظة التي قرر فيها ويللي الابن أن يهاجر مع أنا الفتاة التي أحبته بعد قراءة كتابه الأول ، إلى المسعمرة البرتغالية في شرق افريقيا . بعدها تحولت نسائم الربيع إلى غبار خريقي . كل شئ هنا مر وقاس وصادق وعادي وبارد وثقيل ، كالعنصرية البغيضة
أدب نايبول قريب الشبه جدا بأدب سلمان رشدي البطل هنا "هندي مترجم إلى الإنجليزية " ويبرع نايبول كسلمان في تشيد بناء روائي يمتاز بحبكة داخلية معقدة قائمة على قوة الجمل السردية وتتالي الإستطرادات . يهرب البطل محاولا العثور على صوته الداخلي المتفرد فلا يجد شيئ . وهو أيضا قاس في نقد السياسات الاستعمارية الى حد اتهامه هو نفسه بالعنصرية . يتشابه هذا مع كاتب لطالما شبه به : جوزيف كونراد . أيضا لا يفوت المرء ابراز اهتمام ادوارد سعيد بنايبول ووصفه بالكاتب الفذ . كذلك مقال أورهان باموق في كتابه ألوان أخرى عن أدب العالم الثالث عبر عيون ماريو بارخاس يوسا كمثال . مهم لفهم أفكار نايبول التي تخرج هي الأخرى من عباءة الأدب البعيد عن أوروبا عن أدب العالم الثالث . إذ يقول نايبول نفسه ان كاتب أوروبا يجد عالمه الأدبي بسهولة عكس كتاب العالم الثالث الذين لا يملكون سوى نصف حياة فقط .
ذكرتني هذه الرواية به . بالتحديد بيومِ لي معه . وأيامي مع أبي معدودات . لحصرها أصابع اليد الواحدة تكفي وتزيد. لم نكن أبدا أصدقاء ولم يسع أي منا إلى ذلك . على أي حال بتُ أعتقد أن أي أب في نظر أبنائه هو شئ زائد عن الحد . طبعا الى ان يموت .تعود هذه الذكرى إلى زمن لشد ما يحزنني أنه يبدو الأن مغرقا في القدم .
لا أعلم كيف ورطت نفسي في ما ورطت أبي فيه .قضية سياسية غريبة وغير مفهومة جرت أقدامنا إلى الفصل من الكلية . كان على أبي والحال كذلك أن يتدخل . لم أحسب أن بإمكانه أن يغير من الأمر شئ . لكن الأمور جرت بشكل جيد جدا لم أتتوقعه .
تبقى أن يأت لمقابلة عميد الكلية .
كل ما أذكره عن هذا اليوم نتف غير مجتمعة . أكثر ما يميزه كان برودة الأجواء بشكل غير عادي . وأن أبي الذي عودنا على قسوته وحدة مزاجه كان رائق جدا وأحن مايكون . بدا متفهما لطبيعة المشكلة التي لم أفهمها أنا إلى الأن . كان ذلك منذ أكثر من 8 سنوات .
غريب هذا الزمن .
وغريبة هذه الحياة .
كل ما كنت أفعله هو محاولة المرور بهذه الأوقات العصيبة إلى أقرب بر أمان . أن أعبر بأبي هذا الموقف المحرج . عاقدا العزم على ألا يتكرر كل هذا الهراء أبدا .
إستقبلته من أول الشارع ثم تتلاشى الذكرى . بعد ذلك أراه يعبر معي من باب الكلية بابتسامة غريبة وكأنما هو من أبطال زمن قديم سقط فجأة في زمن الأقزام . رمق الأرجاء بنظرة شفقة ثم إلتفت إلي إلتفاتته الخفيفة
قال ممازحا :
الأن عرفت السر . ما عاد الأمر غريبا . أنت ليس لديك حب هنا . ففضلا عن وجودك في نصف كلية لديك هنا أنصاف فتيات .
ابتسمت .
قلت : لدي هنا نصف حياة يا أبي ..
**
تشكل رواية نصف حياة الصادرة عام 2000 للروائي الترينيدادي متععد الهويات ف.س نايبول ـ في رأي ـ زورة الإبداعي السردي عند هذا الأديب المتفرد على الرغم من أني لم أقرأه له ـ حتى الأن ـ سوى شارع ميجيل مما يجعل شهادة مثل هذه مجروحة تماما لكن سمات أدب هذا الأديب تبدو هنا جلية كأروع ما يكون .
في هذا العمل يصوغ نايبول بقلم لماح نصف حياة لأبطاله شديدي الغرابة . فعبر الفكاهة المحببة للنفس تبرز مرارة الخيبة ووهم الطموح الانساني اذ يصطدم بعقبة الواقع الصلد ، فتعلو نغمة الحزن على ما عاداها .يبدو هنا كل شيئ وكأنما جبل من حزن ، يبحث نايبول عبر هذا العمل عن اجابة للسؤال الشهير : ما هو الانسان فيتعمق في رحلة الابن وابيه ليخرج بمحاولة لاستبطان ماهية الانسان .. الذات والمجتمع . ما الذي ينبغي أن يفعله المرء في عالم استعماري تحاول كل ثقافة ان تفرض نفسها بالقوة على ما سواها فتنهزم روح الانسان وتنتصر الكراهية.
ملمح أخر للرواية النايبولية يتضح هنا . أفريقيا .. تلك القارة التي يلفها الظلام والتي عبثت بها أياد كل مستعمر ، كل من هب ودب استقطع منها قطعة له فما عاد لافريقيا من هوية سوى العنصرية .
النصف الأول من هذا العمل وخصوصا قصة حياة الأب جائت كشيئ حالم لم أعهد مثيله في الأدب . خفة تنضح بالفكاهة . كل جملة وردت هنا جائت وكأنما هي رواية عبقرية مستقلة بذاتها .. إستمرت هذه الخفة حتى بعدما انتهى الأب من قصتة الجميلة لقصة ابنه كذلك إلى حد اللحظة التي قرر فيها ويللي الابن أن يهاجر مع أنا الفتاة التي أحبته بعد قراءة كتابه الأول ، إلى المسعمرة البرتغالية في شرق افريقيا . بعدها تحولت نسائم الربيع إلى غبار خريقي . كل شئ هنا مر وقاس وصادق وعادي وبارد وثقيل ، كالعنصرية البغيضة
أدب نايبول قريب الشبه جدا بأدب سلمان رشدي البطل هنا "هندي مترجم إلى الإنجليزية " ويبرع نايبول كسلمان في تشيد بناء روائي يمتاز بحبكة داخلية معقدة قائمة على قوة الجمل السردية وتتالي الإستطرادات . يهرب البطل محاولا العثور على صوته الداخلي المتفرد فلا يجد شيئ . وهو أيضا قاس في نقد السياسات الاستعمارية الى حد اتهامه هو نفسه بالعنصرية . يتشابه هذا مع كاتب لطالما شبه به : جوزيف كونراد . أيضا لا يفوت المرء ابراز اهتمام ادوارد سعيد بنايبول ووصفه بالكاتب الفذ . كذلك مقال أورهان باموق في كتابه ألوان أخرى عن أدب العالم الثالث عبر عيون ماريو بارخاس يوسا كمثال . مهم لفهم أفكار نايبول التي تخرج هي الأخرى من عباءة الأدب البعيد عن أوروبا عن أدب العالم الثالث . إذ يقول نايبول نفسه ان كاتب أوروبا يجد عالمه الأدبي بسهولة عكس كتاب العالم الثالث الذين لا يملكون سوى نصف حياة فقط .
April 13, 2019
Não gostei do primeiro livro que li de Naipaul e pensei ser um escritor para esquecer. Mas como a vida me ensinou que o que hoje amarga amanhã pode ser doce, e vice-versa, dei-me uma outra oportunidade. E foi um prazer conhecer Willy Chandran � o filho de um brâmane que casa com uma mulher de uma casta baixa, de quem não gosta, apenas para ir contra as tradições. Desgostoso com a vida familiar, Willy, aos vinte anos, abandona a Índia e vai estudar para Londres. Aí conhece Ana e parte com ela para o seu país � uma colónia portuguesa em África.
Quer Willy, quer o seu pai, são dois homens desenquadrados na sociedade em que estão inseridos e que procuram um rumo para a sua vida, diferente do que seria esperado e, aparentemente, pior; ou seja, recusando aceitar o seu "destino" condenam-se a uma vida de constantes inquietações.
_____________
Prémio Nobel da Literatura 2001
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul nasceu em Trindade e Tobago (Chaguanas) em 17 de Agosto de 1932 e morreu em Inglaterra (Londres) em 11 de Agosto de 2018.
Quer Willy, quer o seu pai, são dois homens desenquadrados na sociedade em que estão inseridos e que procuram um rumo para a sua vida, diferente do que seria esperado e, aparentemente, pior; ou seja, recusando aceitar o seu "destino" condenam-se a uma vida de constantes inquietações.
_____________
Prémio Nobel da Literatura 2001
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul nasceu em Trindade e Tobago (Chaguanas) em 17 de Agosto de 1932 e morreu em Inglaterra (Londres) em 11 de Agosto de 2018.
January 8, 2023
Willie Chandran is an outsider from birth, apart from everyone and everything in his life wherever he is. His alienation comes partly from the circumstances of his birth to an unhappy couple, but also choices he makes no matter where he goes. Somewhat aimless, he never really launches, and as he looks back over his life, the only real growth he shows is in carnal knowledge.
What Naipaul intended with this story is hard to determine. It ends abruptly and leaves much unresolved. But in the middle section in London, an acquaintance and almost friend of Willie’s tells him that stories usually have a beginning, middle and end, and suggests to Willie he vary from that when he attempts to write fiction. Maybe that’s what Naipaul was doing, making it harder than normal to read his tale and force us to figure things out for ourselves (maybe not giving us an ending at all). Perhaps the title tells us the protagonist was only living his life half way and to not expect too much.
The writing is good and matches the apartness of the protagonist, keeping us at a distance with his judgments and harsh, negative opinions of others. Just unsatisfying at the end. Not a dud, but one expects more from a Nobel Laureate.
3 1/2 stars.
One more thing: Willie’s middle name is Somerset after Maugham (a writer I’ve always liked), who entered Willie’s father’s life at an awkward moment and unwittingly changed it after writing The Razor’s Edge. This intersection of East and West was one of the more interesting little interludes.
What Naipaul intended with this story is hard to determine. It ends abruptly and leaves much unresolved. But in the middle section in London, an acquaintance and almost friend of Willie’s tells him that stories usually have a beginning, middle and end, and suggests to Willie he vary from that when he attempts to write fiction. Maybe that’s what Naipaul was doing, making it harder than normal to read his tale and force us to figure things out for ourselves (maybe not giving us an ending at all). Perhaps the title tells us the protagonist was only living his life half way and to not expect too much.
The writing is good and matches the apartness of the protagonist, keeping us at a distance with his judgments and harsh, negative opinions of others. Just unsatisfying at the end. Not a dud, but one expects more from a Nobel Laureate.
3 1/2 stars.
One more thing: Willie’s middle name is Somerset after Maugham (a writer I’ve always liked), who entered Willie’s father’s life at an awkward moment and unwittingly changed it after writing The Razor’s Edge. This intersection of East and West was one of the more interesting little interludes.
May 30, 2024
The Difficulty of Self-Knowledge
Naipaul's novel "Half a Life" plays upon the ambiguity of its title in several ways. " In the most obvious sense, the book tells the story of "half a life" because it covers the life of its protagonist, Willie Somerset Chandran, up to the age of 41. (Slightly more than half the human lifespan of threescore and ten). At the end of the book, the reader is left to wonder about the manner in which Willie's subsequent life will develop.
In another sense, the novel tells the story of "half a life" in terms of quality rather than quantity (length of life). Willie leads only half a fully-developed human life in the book because of his frustration, for sexual as well as other reasons, and lack of purpose. Just as Willie comes to realize, the reader comes to realize as well the empty character of Willie's life.
Perhaps another sense in which the novel tells the story of "half a life" is that the author does not reveal Willie's full story. We learn about his frustrated ambitions, his family, his travels, and something of his sexuality. The book seems to suggest that there is more to the character, both within him and without him, than the author tells us.
A final sense in which the book tells of "half a life" lies in its autobiographical character. The book seems to be based in part on Naipaul's own life. But it does so by taking details from an actual lived life and scrambling them up and changing them through imagination, just in the way that Willie in the novel uses movie plots to create his volume of short stories. For example in the book Willie is born in India, goes to college in England as a scholarship student, and then lives in Mozambique. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, went to England as a scholarship student, and has written much about India.
All these possible meanings to the term "half a life" focus on Willie's lack of self-knowledge and his difficulty in attaining it. Willie seems the constant outsider. He is never comfortable with himself of where he is. He has no real plan or purpose for himself. In the book, he learns that he is a writer of promise and produces a good first volume of short stories. But he doesn't follow-up and instead leads a drifting life in Mozambique for 18 years. Equally important, Willie is sexually frustrated and, as he stresses, sexually ignorant. Willie's sexual frustration has its beginning in the India of his boyhood and in the unhappy relationship between his parents. It continues through his college years in London where he has sexual relationships with his friends' girlfriends and with prostitutes. And in Mozambique he continues his relationships with young African prostitutes and with the wives of acquaintances.
The book is in three large sections which describe Willie's life in India, his life as a student in London, and his years in Mozambique. I was greatly drawn into the first two parts of the book, particularly the middle section describing Willie's student days in London. The third lengthy section describing Willie's life in Mozambique in the final years of colonial rule falls off markedly.
This is a tough-minded book about its protagonist's inability to come to terms with himself, to find a goal in life he can pursue and a full human sexual relationship. It suggests the many ways in which people are limited, through their own choices or through their circumstances, to living "half a life".
Robin Friedman
Naipaul's novel "Half a Life" plays upon the ambiguity of its title in several ways. " In the most obvious sense, the book tells the story of "half a life" because it covers the life of its protagonist, Willie Somerset Chandran, up to the age of 41. (Slightly more than half the human lifespan of threescore and ten). At the end of the book, the reader is left to wonder about the manner in which Willie's subsequent life will develop.
In another sense, the novel tells the story of "half a life" in terms of quality rather than quantity (length of life). Willie leads only half a fully-developed human life in the book because of his frustration, for sexual as well as other reasons, and lack of purpose. Just as Willie comes to realize, the reader comes to realize as well the empty character of Willie's life.
Perhaps another sense in which the novel tells the story of "half a life" is that the author does not reveal Willie's full story. We learn about his frustrated ambitions, his family, his travels, and something of his sexuality. The book seems to suggest that there is more to the character, both within him and without him, than the author tells us.
A final sense in which the book tells of "half a life" lies in its autobiographical character. The book seems to be based in part on Naipaul's own life. But it does so by taking details from an actual lived life and scrambling them up and changing them through imagination, just in the way that Willie in the novel uses movie plots to create his volume of short stories. For example in the book Willie is born in India, goes to college in England as a scholarship student, and then lives in Mozambique. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, went to England as a scholarship student, and has written much about India.
All these possible meanings to the term "half a life" focus on Willie's lack of self-knowledge and his difficulty in attaining it. Willie seems the constant outsider. He is never comfortable with himself of where he is. He has no real plan or purpose for himself. In the book, he learns that he is a writer of promise and produces a good first volume of short stories. But he doesn't follow-up and instead leads a drifting life in Mozambique for 18 years. Equally important, Willie is sexually frustrated and, as he stresses, sexually ignorant. Willie's sexual frustration has its beginning in the India of his boyhood and in the unhappy relationship between his parents. It continues through his college years in London where he has sexual relationships with his friends' girlfriends and with prostitutes. And in Mozambique he continues his relationships with young African prostitutes and with the wives of acquaintances.
The book is in three large sections which describe Willie's life in India, his life as a student in London, and his years in Mozambique. I was greatly drawn into the first two parts of the book, particularly the middle section describing Willie's student days in London. The third lengthy section describing Willie's life in Mozambique in the final years of colonial rule falls off markedly.
This is a tough-minded book about its protagonist's inability to come to terms with himself, to find a goal in life he can pursue and a full human sexual relationship. It suggests the many ways in which people are limited, through their own choices or through their circumstances, to living "half a life".
Robin Friedman
May 13, 2019
I checked out the two books of this series, this the first and then Magic Seeds. I have read a small portion of the second and will be returning both books to the library for someone else to read.
Overall weirdness - something I like to sample but not when it just does not gel for me. He moves around in the first one: India, London, Africa. Apparently the second book takes him back to Great Britain. But...it starts in Berlin? His sister Sarojini asks him where he wants to go next since his 6-month visa is going to expire."I don't see what I can do. I don't know where I can go."
"You've never felt there was anything for you to do. You've never understood that men have to make the world for themselves....Eighteen years in Africa. Your poor wife. She thought she was getting a man. She should have talked to me...You've always preferred to hide. It's the colonial psychosis, the caste psychosis. You inherited it from your father."
...and on and on it goes
Overall weirdness - something I like to sample but not when it just does not gel for me. He moves around in the first one: India, London, Africa. Apparently the second book takes him back to Great Britain. But...it starts in Berlin? His sister Sarojini asks him where he wants to go next since his 6-month visa is going to expire."I don't see what I can do. I don't know where I can go."
"You've never felt there was anything for you to do. You've never understood that men have to make the world for themselves....Eighteen years in Africa. Your poor wife. She thought she was getting a man. She should have talked to me...You've always preferred to hide. It's the colonial psychosis, the caste psychosis. You inherited it from your father."
...and on and on it goes
November 26, 2011
Half a Life, published a decade ago, is another one of Naipaul's spare, brooding tales that focuses on the lack of identity--cultural identity, really--that characterizes modern life. The novel begins with a kind of joke. Willie Chandran was so named for W. Somerset Maughm who once met Willie's confused father, a silent holy man in India. This brought Willie no luck, however. Maughm wrote about the father, but he never expressed interest in helping Willie, not even when Willie showed up in London.
The London Willie came to (sometime in the 50's, one imagines) was a kind of imperial beach, littered with the human artifacts that the British Empire had brought upon itself: Indians, people from the Caribbean, Africans, Canadians, and so forth. Everyone was half something, half something else.
As it happens, Willie has some luck writing for the BBC while pursuing studies at an unnamed college. He then squeezes a book of short stories out of himself, most of the stories fables set in imaginary kingdoms. One thinks, aha, like Maughm Willie will become a writer, and perhaps a successful one. But no, here Naipaul breaks off his own personal saga (he came to London from Trinidad and established himself as a writer from the get-go) and takes Willie on a kind of cultural/sexual saga wherein he experiments with whores, loose Brits looking for a fling with a man of color, and then a Portuguese-African, Ana, who in some ways saves him. They move to a Portuguese colony in Africa where her father left her an estate, and for eighteen years Willie accomodates himself to luxury in the bush, with occasional night rides into the dance halls of black Africans where his needs are explosively satisfied by very young women.
His life seems pointless. The lives around him also seem pointless. High points are the night rides and the weekend lunches at other estates, where the architectural grandeur (or pretension) is not matched by intrinsic human interest. (Sidenote: Having spent much of my life exposed to well-to-do ex-pats, I'm of the opinion that they're among the saddest of all human beings, ravenous to hear about the States but insistent that they know the States better, far better, than anyone who actually lives there.)
Then Willie meets a woman named Gracia, who is his instant soulmate although she's trapped in a marriage to a drunk estate manager. Well, there's a loping quality in a Naipaul in which "one day" these things happen; they just do. Two eyes meet two eyes and all four eyes explode with understanding.
But meanwhile the Portuguese-based regime is crumbling; black Africa is reclaiming its rightful place, and Gracia and Willia (and Ana) are pulled apart, unsure that any of them has really had a life, or perhaps even half a life, the book's title.
Oops, I gave the ending away, but this hardly matters. Naipaul excels in perfectly controlled, clearly focused, exotic studies of people and the cultural landscapes in which they dwell. That's what you read him for. This isn't Of Human Bondage, big and throbbing and heart-wrenching. No, Willie and other protagonists in Naipaul's books are written in minor keys. Their claims are acute but modest; they are trapped betwixt and between, and that's what one reads Naipaul to experience...that ambiguity and ambivalence...that sense that among ex-pats there are at least a few thoughtful, pained figures worth your time.
The London Willie came to (sometime in the 50's, one imagines) was a kind of imperial beach, littered with the human artifacts that the British Empire had brought upon itself: Indians, people from the Caribbean, Africans, Canadians, and so forth. Everyone was half something, half something else.
As it happens, Willie has some luck writing for the BBC while pursuing studies at an unnamed college. He then squeezes a book of short stories out of himself, most of the stories fables set in imaginary kingdoms. One thinks, aha, like Maughm Willie will become a writer, and perhaps a successful one. But no, here Naipaul breaks off his own personal saga (he came to London from Trinidad and established himself as a writer from the get-go) and takes Willie on a kind of cultural/sexual saga wherein he experiments with whores, loose Brits looking for a fling with a man of color, and then a Portuguese-African, Ana, who in some ways saves him. They move to a Portuguese colony in Africa where her father left her an estate, and for eighteen years Willie accomodates himself to luxury in the bush, with occasional night rides into the dance halls of black Africans where his needs are explosively satisfied by very young women.
His life seems pointless. The lives around him also seem pointless. High points are the night rides and the weekend lunches at other estates, where the architectural grandeur (or pretension) is not matched by intrinsic human interest. (Sidenote: Having spent much of my life exposed to well-to-do ex-pats, I'm of the opinion that they're among the saddest of all human beings, ravenous to hear about the States but insistent that they know the States better, far better, than anyone who actually lives there.)
Then Willie meets a woman named Gracia, who is his instant soulmate although she's trapped in a marriage to a drunk estate manager. Well, there's a loping quality in a Naipaul in which "one day" these things happen; they just do. Two eyes meet two eyes and all four eyes explode with understanding.
But meanwhile the Portuguese-based regime is crumbling; black Africa is reclaiming its rightful place, and Gracia and Willia (and Ana) are pulled apart, unsure that any of them has really had a life, or perhaps even half a life, the book's title.
Oops, I gave the ending away, but this hardly matters. Naipaul excels in perfectly controlled, clearly focused, exotic studies of people and the cultural landscapes in which they dwell. That's what you read him for. This isn't Of Human Bondage, big and throbbing and heart-wrenching. No, Willie and other protagonists in Naipaul's books are written in minor keys. Their claims are acute but modest; they are trapped betwixt and between, and that's what one reads Naipaul to experience...that ambiguity and ambivalence...that sense that among ex-pats there are at least a few thoughtful, pained figures worth your time.
October 4, 2018
This is second book by Naipaul that I have read and found it a third rate, depressing book written by somebody drunk on his success. I started reading him looking at his great literary awards but after reading Guerrillas and now this, I have decided to put a stop to this. The plot is all over the place , there is nothing that can hold reader's attention . Too much emphasis on sexual impotence and later sexual discovery by the protagonist is a huge distraction which does little to build the plot. Avoid at all costs
January 6, 2025
Este foi o meu primeiro livro de Naipaul, não será o último, mas estava à espera de ter gostado mais. Gostei da história, que nos conta parte (metade) da vida de Willie Somerset Chandran, começando pela dos seus pais, um brâmane e uma mulher de casta inferior, com quem se casou por um capricho de juventude.
A vida de Willie passa pela Índia, Reino Unido e Moçambique, na altura ainda uma colónia portuguesa. O livro retrata muito bem a falta de rumo de Willie, a forma como se sente perdido e vai vivendo os acontecimentos um pouco à medida como eles se lhe apresentam, sem planeamento nem objetivos. Tem passagens muito bonitas.
”O seu mundo em África estava a chegar ao fim; não creio que nenhum dos presentes pusesse isso em causa, apesar de todos os discursos e do cerimonial; mas todos estavam tranquilos, a desfrutar o momento, a encher a velha sala com os seus risos e conversas, como se não se importassem com o que viria a acontecer, como pessoas que sabiam viver com a história. Nunca admirei tanto os portugueses como nesse momento.�
Acho que o que gostei menos, e me impede de lhe dar mais de três estrelas foi a obsessão de Willie com a sua virilidade, que atravessa o livro do princípio ao fim e se torna um tanto obsessiva. Ainda assim, tiro o chapéu a Naipaul, que consegue descrever as cenas mais desagradáveis sem nunca cair na vulgaridade, e por vezes tornando-as mesmo bonitas.
É também um prazer pegar num livro tão bem traduzido, que temos a sensação de ter sido escrito na nossa língua, que foi o que me aconteceu com este, traduzido por José Vieira de Lima.
"Levara comigo uma capa de borracha do exército. Estendi-a no alpendre e deitámo-nos nela sem trocar palavra.
(�) e eu pensei quão terrível teria sido se, como facilmente poderia ter acontecido, eu tivesse morrido sem conhecer uma tal profundidade de satisfação (...)"
A vida de Willie passa pela Índia, Reino Unido e Moçambique, na altura ainda uma colónia portuguesa. O livro retrata muito bem a falta de rumo de Willie, a forma como se sente perdido e vai vivendo os acontecimentos um pouco à medida como eles se lhe apresentam, sem planeamento nem objetivos. Tem passagens muito bonitas.
”O seu mundo em África estava a chegar ao fim; não creio que nenhum dos presentes pusesse isso em causa, apesar de todos os discursos e do cerimonial; mas todos estavam tranquilos, a desfrutar o momento, a encher a velha sala com os seus risos e conversas, como se não se importassem com o que viria a acontecer, como pessoas que sabiam viver com a história. Nunca admirei tanto os portugueses como nesse momento.�
Acho que o que gostei menos, e me impede de lhe dar mais de três estrelas foi a obsessão de Willie com a sua virilidade, que atravessa o livro do princípio ao fim e se torna um tanto obsessiva. Ainda assim, tiro o chapéu a Naipaul, que consegue descrever as cenas mais desagradáveis sem nunca cair na vulgaridade, e por vezes tornando-as mesmo bonitas.
É também um prazer pegar num livro tão bem traduzido, que temos a sensação de ter sido escrito na nossa língua, que foi o que me aconteceu com este, traduzido por José Vieira de Lima.
"Levara comigo uma capa de borracha do exército. Estendi-a no alpendre e deitámo-nos nela sem trocar palavra.
(�) e eu pensei quão terrível teria sido se, como facilmente poderia ter acontecido, eu tivesse morrido sem conhecer uma tal profundidade de satisfação (...)"
October 7, 2016
تاريخ القراءة الاصلي : ٢٠٠٢
أظن أن كثيرا من جمال النص الأصلي تساقط مع الترجمة
أظن أن كثيرا من جمال النص الأصلي تساقط مع الترجمة
November 12, 2024
I descend from a long line of wanderers. At one point in time (the 1970s) my 4 siblings and I were as distant from each other on the globe as we possibly could be. My ancestors landed in Massachusetts in 1630 and on the other coast, my great great grandmother was born on a ship that landed in San Francisco when it was Yerba Buena, before it was stolen from Mexico, before the Gold Rush. I have made my home in the cone of South America 10,000 km away from where I was born in Los Angeles, looking out to sea.
So the hapless, mistake that is Willie Chandran and his windblown peregrinations in this book should feel familial to me, but no, he doesn’t, it doesn’t. Everything happens to him, on him. Never from him. He watches his life on TV.
Which brought me to Joseph Campbell who told us all to Follow Our Bliss:
“The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.�
Except Willie wasn’t paying attention, ever. He is randomly thrown from place to place, never really bothering to gain an orientation, learn the stories, the history, develop any relationships that are more than commodities.
You know, the work that needs to be done before you figure out who you are, the hard work, the quest of growing up. Here Willie´s story is only a tale of fraudulent bargains that made up an identity. Pendulum swings.
I have spent a long time over the years thinking and reading about Identity, about the things that cause some people to stay in personal or societal situations that harm them, that disempower them, that make up their so-called identity. Reasons they never leave home. The gravitational pull of religion, or culture or the unwillingness to break an imaginary or assumed code - or worse the persistent belief in a fairy tale that seems ridiculous (to me).
Or sometimes, just the desire to be liked keeps people hemmed in. And they, sadly, never live their adventure. But then�
Again I think of Joseph Campbell:
“For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work -- or, if working, produce deviant effects -- there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain will take to be for 'meaning.'�
See, none of this was happening with Willie. In no other VSN book have I felt it was so much about the writing and not the story. I am tempted to compare Willie to an Autumn leaf being blown about, but leaves have important work. Fallen leaves provide habitat for insects and microbia, they break down into nutrients for the tree they are part of; Willie had no important work at all.
VSN has always written about the hypocrisies of power and inequities of life, how the bag we are thrown at birth, whether empty or a bag of chips, determines the path we are set upon. But usually his writing is tempered with humor, pathos, spread on a full plate of history, so that we can laugh at our own buffoonery. This was just a sucker punch. There was humor but it always seemed at too much expense.
The early chapters, telling the story of Willie’s rather unfortunate conception to his accidentally famous high caste father and his randomly chosen, education-cut-short, low caste mother are the most enjoyable. None of it seemed quite dharmic.
Is that a word?
And all of the women characters were flat, stereotypical, not up to VSN’s usual eyrie heights.
One moment in end-stage colonial Mozambique (soon coming to the concrete world everywhere):
“It didn’t have much longer to go now; and I wonder whether in our circle we hadn’t all …been granted some unsettling intimation, which we might have brushed aside, that our bluff in Africa would one day be called. Though I don’t think anyone could have guessed that the world of concrete was going to be so completely overwhelmed by the frail old world of straw.�
So the hapless, mistake that is Willie Chandran and his windblown peregrinations in this book should feel familial to me, but no, he doesn’t, it doesn’t. Everything happens to him, on him. Never from him. He watches his life on TV.
Which brought me to Joseph Campbell who told us all to Follow Our Bliss:
“The heroic life is living the individual adventure. There is no security in following the call to adventure. Nothing is exciting if you know what the outcome is going to be.�
Except Willie wasn’t paying attention, ever. He is randomly thrown from place to place, never really bothering to gain an orientation, learn the stories, the history, develop any relationships that are more than commodities.
You know, the work that needs to be done before you figure out who you are, the hard work, the quest of growing up. Here Willie´s story is only a tale of fraudulent bargains that made up an identity. Pendulum swings.
I have spent a long time over the years thinking and reading about Identity, about the things that cause some people to stay in personal or societal situations that harm them, that disempower them, that make up their so-called identity. Reasons they never leave home. The gravitational pull of religion, or culture or the unwillingness to break an imaginary or assumed code - or worse the persistent belief in a fairy tale that seems ridiculous (to me).
Or sometimes, just the desire to be liked keeps people hemmed in. And they, sadly, never live their adventure. But then�
Again I think of Joseph Campbell:
“For those in whom a local mythology still works, there is an experience both of accord with the social order, and of harmony with the universe. For those, however, in whom the authorized signs no longer work -- or, if working, produce deviant effects -- there follows inevitably a sense both of dissociation from the local social nexus and of quest, within and without, for life, which the brain will take to be for 'meaning.'�
See, none of this was happening with Willie. In no other VSN book have I felt it was so much about the writing and not the story. I am tempted to compare Willie to an Autumn leaf being blown about, but leaves have important work. Fallen leaves provide habitat for insects and microbia, they break down into nutrients for the tree they are part of; Willie had no important work at all.
VSN has always written about the hypocrisies of power and inequities of life, how the bag we are thrown at birth, whether empty or a bag of chips, determines the path we are set upon. But usually his writing is tempered with humor, pathos, spread on a full plate of history, so that we can laugh at our own buffoonery. This was just a sucker punch. There was humor but it always seemed at too much expense.
The early chapters, telling the story of Willie’s rather unfortunate conception to his accidentally famous high caste father and his randomly chosen, education-cut-short, low caste mother are the most enjoyable. None of it seemed quite dharmic.
Is that a word?
And all of the women characters were flat, stereotypical, not up to VSN’s usual eyrie heights.
One moment in end-stage colonial Mozambique (soon coming to the concrete world everywhere):
“It didn’t have much longer to go now; and I wonder whether in our circle we hadn’t all …been granted some unsettling intimation, which we might have brushed aside, that our bluff in Africa would one day be called. Though I don’t think anyone could have guessed that the world of concrete was going to be so completely overwhelmed by the frail old world of straw.�
November 27, 2019
Oh so much telling... so very much. I started out invested in the story and in Willie and half-way through I felt life was too short to read this in detail. Half a Life indeed. I didn’t want to leave it so I skimmed through the long boring historical narratives to where Willie reminisced about his interactions with others. I was interested in him but the memoir-like execution did not serve the story at all.
It’s funny that at the start, with all the literary references of a post-modern novel, Willie praises the brilliance of Hemingway’s use of dialogue and it’s ability to carry a story forward, yet at no point is dialogue paramount in this book. And, it turns out to be just another Naipaul colonial text. Sigh.
It’s funny that at the start, with all the literary references of a post-modern novel, Willie praises the brilliance of Hemingway’s use of dialogue and it’s ability to carry a story forward, yet at no point is dialogue paramount in this book. And, it turns out to be just another Naipaul colonial text. Sigh.
August 19, 2008
Quite unremarkable. I haven’t read anything else by Naipaul, and I probably won’t. I know I shouldn’t generalize from reading one book, but I do anyway. Methinks Naipaul is another mediocre Nobel laureate. (Jelinek and Mahfouz are the other examples that come immediately to my mind.) The protagonist is insufferably unlikable, boring, and passive. (At least Jelinek has a sick imagination and manages to make you hate her monstrous characters.) As for the writing � honestly, I think you’ll find better examples of writing in any creative writing class.
March 14, 2024
Willie Chandran, nascunt in India, intr-o familie disfuntionala, unde tatal a ales sa intoarca spatele mostenirii brahmane si s-a casatorit cu o femeie dintr-o casta inferioara (o uniune regretabila si dezastruoasa), ajuns la maturitatea pleaca la Londra. "-Nu platim oare cu totii, zi de zi, pentru pacatele trecutului, in timp ce acumulam pedepse pentru viitor?"
Ajuns in Anglia, intr-o cu totul alta lume si cultura, Willie incearca sa-si cladeasca o noua identitate printre imigrantii si boemii anilor 1950. "Totul merge in prejudecati. Lumea ar trebui sa se opreasca, dar continua."
Avand un subiect interesant si o aroma orientala credeam ca are ingredientele necesare pentru a imi capta atentia, dar nu a fost asa. Desi incepe binisor, mi s-a parut ca pe parcurs incepe sa fie lipsita de viata si plictisitoare.
Ajuns in Anglia, intr-o cu totul alta lume si cultura, Willie incearca sa-si cladeasca o noua identitate printre imigrantii si boemii anilor 1950. "Totul merge in prejudecati. Lumea ar trebui sa se opreasca, dar continua."
Avand un subiect interesant si o aroma orientala credeam ca are ingredientele necesare pentru a imi capta atentia, dar nu a fost asa. Desi incepe binisor, mi s-a parut ca pe parcurs incepe sa fie lipsita de viata si plictisitoare.
April 10, 2008
This is an unusual novel. There's no actual plot; instead, the story follows a man through his restless, aimless life. I know this doesn't sound very compelling, but it is--his desire for more--to figure out where he belongs and what he should be doing to create meaning in his life--is crushing.
SPOILER!
The structure cleverly echoes this vacancy. After following the character closely for 120 pages, you suddenly encounter this terrifying line: "He stayed for eighteen years." And then the narrative picks up at the end of the eighteen years. There is this enormous hole in the center of the story--which very effectively gave me a sense of hollowness. Eventually, those eighteen years are somewhat filled out, but never to the point where you feel this character has had a satisfying life. He ends up as an exile three times over, distant from everything, unmotivated but restless, still young but crippled physically and mentally, and totally dependent. He's had, indeed, only half a life.
SPOILER!
The structure cleverly echoes this vacancy. After following the character closely for 120 pages, you suddenly encounter this terrifying line: "He stayed for eighteen years." And then the narrative picks up at the end of the eighteen years. There is this enormous hole in the center of the story--which very effectively gave me a sense of hollowness. Eventually, those eighteen years are somewhat filled out, but never to the point where you feel this character has had a satisfying life. He ends up as an exile three times over, distant from everything, unmotivated but restless, still young but crippled physically and mentally, and totally dependent. He's had, indeed, only half a life.
May 15, 2007
naipaul is BRUTUAL! many people are critical of his unsympathetic and even accusatory attitude towards citizens of undeveloped countries... but he's got something valid to say and it's worth hearing. this semi-autobiographical work explains how one can be both vulnerable and responsible. in other words, power is not only to be claimed by the wealthy. it's up for grabs.
August 4, 2017
Half a Good Book...
February 9, 2019
Great novelists need alter egos to rationalize their lives. Updike had Rabbit, Roth had Zuckerman, and Naipaul has Willie Chandran.
This novel, the first of two Willie Chandran books cover’s the protagonists life until his early forties. It’s a novel about displacement and the quest to belong. Willie’s great grandfather left the protection of the temple to seek his life in the big city, a migration that was transformative, for he rose to prominence as a scribe in the employ of the maharajah of his state in India. Willie’s cowardly father went the other way, from courtier back to the ashram. It is for Willie to step up to the plate and find his place in the world and he ends up as a student in England, just like Naipaul did.
Willie’s desire to write gets him into bohemian circles in London where his first book of stories from his homeland is published. Yet, Willie is rootless, lacking in social graces and class. He is unable to date a woman and instead sleeps with his male friends� girlfriends, as he already knows them and is able to approach them for larger “favours.� He gravitates to prostitutes until he falls in love with Ana, a Portuguese emigré. The book then takes a dramatic turn as Willie gives up his blossoming writing career in England to follow Ana to her home, a Portuguese colony in East Africa never mentioned by name, but which I took to be Mozambique.
The second half of the story in Africa is a told one for it is Willie now recounting his 18 years in that continent to his sister Sarojini whom he has returned to in Berlin. This part has a remarkable lack of dialogue. However Naipaul gets to expose the plight of the immigrant in this section. Just as Willie tried his damndest to become an Englishman in England and failed, the locals, who are African, half-breed or Arab, try their best to become Portuguese in his new home, for becoming like the ruling class confers the highest privileges. Naipaul describes the colonial farms run by the Portuguese gentry very well, right from the furniture to the lifestyle, to the side deals they do to amass money. Ana gets the legitimacy to run her farm with Willie as her man of the house, although he is even more rootless than in England, and very soon takes up with prostitutes, again. History repeats when he is rescued from the emotionless whores by falling in lust with Graḉa, Ana’s friend married to a drunk. The existence of this colonial society that was formed after the first world war is at risk due to the encroaching guerilla war, fermented by dissent, foreign support, and inequality. And when the transference of power happens, Willie lives through the breakdown of systems, estate take-overs, scarcities, and the transition to everyone becoming poor. But like much of Africa today, the locals who gain power then start fighting among themselves, snapping Willie’s last straw, making him flee, not only Africa and Ana, but his own wasted and deprived life. He accuses Ana, “I’ve been living your life for eighteen years, not mine.� Then why the heck did he go to Africa? That question is never quite answered, although race riots occurred in Notting Hill at the time.
Like I found with the second of the Willie Chandran novels, Magic Seeds, that I read a few years ago, Naipaul seems to be losing his novelistic edge at this point of his career, although this book has a bit more legs to it than the sequel does. He seems to be more interested in exposing the social, political and psychological impacts of immigration via a thinly veiled story, than in the story itself. There were gaps in the narrative in places, for instance I didn’t know that Willie and Perdita (another of Willie’s London friend’s girlfriends) had lit a spark, I didn’t know he had given one of his prostitutes half a week’s wages—had an eager editor cut these bits out, or had Naipaul forgotten to write them in?
That this is an incomplete novel requiring a sequel is obvious, for Willie is no more resolved at the end than when we first meet him. However, given my disappointment in the sequel, I wondered why Naipaul bothered to create this alter-ego. Naipaul was a far more interesting character in himself, and books like Sir Vidia’s Shadow do better justice and shed far more light on this enigmatic writer. I think Naipaul would have been well placed to have written about the real world, using his insightful observational and narrative powers to make sense of it for us, rather than to examine his complex life via Willie Chandran.
This novel, the first of two Willie Chandran books cover’s the protagonists life until his early forties. It’s a novel about displacement and the quest to belong. Willie’s great grandfather left the protection of the temple to seek his life in the big city, a migration that was transformative, for he rose to prominence as a scribe in the employ of the maharajah of his state in India. Willie’s cowardly father went the other way, from courtier back to the ashram. It is for Willie to step up to the plate and find his place in the world and he ends up as a student in England, just like Naipaul did.
Willie’s desire to write gets him into bohemian circles in London where his first book of stories from his homeland is published. Yet, Willie is rootless, lacking in social graces and class. He is unable to date a woman and instead sleeps with his male friends� girlfriends, as he already knows them and is able to approach them for larger “favours.� He gravitates to prostitutes until he falls in love with Ana, a Portuguese emigré. The book then takes a dramatic turn as Willie gives up his blossoming writing career in England to follow Ana to her home, a Portuguese colony in East Africa never mentioned by name, but which I took to be Mozambique.
The second half of the story in Africa is a told one for it is Willie now recounting his 18 years in that continent to his sister Sarojini whom he has returned to in Berlin. This part has a remarkable lack of dialogue. However Naipaul gets to expose the plight of the immigrant in this section. Just as Willie tried his damndest to become an Englishman in England and failed, the locals, who are African, half-breed or Arab, try their best to become Portuguese in his new home, for becoming like the ruling class confers the highest privileges. Naipaul describes the colonial farms run by the Portuguese gentry very well, right from the furniture to the lifestyle, to the side deals they do to amass money. Ana gets the legitimacy to run her farm with Willie as her man of the house, although he is even more rootless than in England, and very soon takes up with prostitutes, again. History repeats when he is rescued from the emotionless whores by falling in lust with Graḉa, Ana’s friend married to a drunk. The existence of this colonial society that was formed after the first world war is at risk due to the encroaching guerilla war, fermented by dissent, foreign support, and inequality. And when the transference of power happens, Willie lives through the breakdown of systems, estate take-overs, scarcities, and the transition to everyone becoming poor. But like much of Africa today, the locals who gain power then start fighting among themselves, snapping Willie’s last straw, making him flee, not only Africa and Ana, but his own wasted and deprived life. He accuses Ana, “I’ve been living your life for eighteen years, not mine.� Then why the heck did he go to Africa? That question is never quite answered, although race riots occurred in Notting Hill at the time.
Like I found with the second of the Willie Chandran novels, Magic Seeds, that I read a few years ago, Naipaul seems to be losing his novelistic edge at this point of his career, although this book has a bit more legs to it than the sequel does. He seems to be more interested in exposing the social, political and psychological impacts of immigration via a thinly veiled story, than in the story itself. There were gaps in the narrative in places, for instance I didn’t know that Willie and Perdita (another of Willie’s London friend’s girlfriends) had lit a spark, I didn’t know he had given one of his prostitutes half a week’s wages—had an eager editor cut these bits out, or had Naipaul forgotten to write them in?
That this is an incomplete novel requiring a sequel is obvious, for Willie is no more resolved at the end than when we first meet him. However, given my disappointment in the sequel, I wondered why Naipaul bothered to create this alter-ego. Naipaul was a far more interesting character in himself, and books like Sir Vidia’s Shadow do better justice and shed far more light on this enigmatic writer. I think Naipaul would have been well placed to have written about the real world, using his insightful observational and narrative powers to make sense of it for us, rather than to examine his complex life via Willie Chandran.
May 21, 2023
Um relato simples, mas interessante que, sem estar à espera, me fez viajar da Índia, para Londres e finalmente para Moçambique colonial português.
June 27, 2010
I know VS Naipaul is one of the most highly regarded authors of the 20th century and that he won a Nobel Prize for literature. I had read his book, "A Bend in the River", also about Colonial Africa and found it extraordinary and memorable.... This one even more so.
This is a deeply affecting, fictional (apparently semi-autobiographical) narrative about an Indian man who cannot find himself. Having been raised in the conflicted world of a hindu father who intentionally wed a very very low caste woman, just to throw spite on his social status. The father then, absolutely loathing this 'piece of the gutter' he has married to belittle his our person (this is the pervasive attitude he conveys) totally and utterly belittles and disregards her throughout his children's lives. This leaves his son without any clear sense of worth - of his father, of himself, of his sister. His mother has no worth. Period. It is a devastating family identity. (this woman, his wife is so lowly regarded that even the most destitute and dire of the poor - the man who gives water to the elementary students in a tin cup, is so revolted by her low caste that he refuses to give her any water.)
As a young man, the boy goes off to school in England and searches for self-meaning. He ends up in an unnamed Portuguese Colonial in east Africa, married to another 'half-caste' as t'were.... This is an aspect of Colonial Africa I have never before visited, in any way. And I found it very fascinating.
It is a deeply hypocritical world, this colonialism, and the post-colonialism from which he comes. He observes and feels the contradictions and conflicts in those around him and in himself. Never fully able to feel connected with Ana or himself, he concludes he is living the life of another.... a life that does not belong to him.
I believe this is an inner conflict and outer reality that many displaced persons in this world must feel: always somehow at loose ends, never quite 'belonging' - in ones own mind or in the minds of those around you but about you, never fully at ease, never fully comfortable.... never 'home'. A compelling and difficult world to inhabit, I imagine.
I can understand why Naipaul won the Nobel Prize..... He is an amazingly powerful writer.
This is a deeply affecting, fictional (apparently semi-autobiographical) narrative about an Indian man who cannot find himself. Having been raised in the conflicted world of a hindu father who intentionally wed a very very low caste woman, just to throw spite on his social status. The father then, absolutely loathing this 'piece of the gutter' he has married to belittle his our person (this is the pervasive attitude he conveys) totally and utterly belittles and disregards her throughout his children's lives. This leaves his son without any clear sense of worth - of his father, of himself, of his sister. His mother has no worth. Period. It is a devastating family identity. (this woman, his wife is so lowly regarded that even the most destitute and dire of the poor - the man who gives water to the elementary students in a tin cup, is so revolted by her low caste that he refuses to give her any water.)
As a young man, the boy goes off to school in England and searches for self-meaning. He ends up in an unnamed Portuguese Colonial in east Africa, married to another 'half-caste' as t'were.... This is an aspect of Colonial Africa I have never before visited, in any way. And I found it very fascinating.
It is a deeply hypocritical world, this colonialism, and the post-colonialism from which he comes. He observes and feels the contradictions and conflicts in those around him and in himself. Never fully able to feel connected with Ana or himself, he concludes he is living the life of another.... a life that does not belong to him.
I believe this is an inner conflict and outer reality that many displaced persons in this world must feel: always somehow at loose ends, never quite 'belonging' - in ones own mind or in the minds of those around you but about you, never fully at ease, never fully comfortable.... never 'home'. A compelling and difficult world to inhabit, I imagine.
I can understand why Naipaul won the Nobel Prize..... He is an amazingly powerful writer.
November 25, 2014
Sadly I wasn't impressed.
Well.. I don't really say "Meh" but it is fitting so it will be used here.
**Meh!**
This is the last book to complete my reading challenge for 2014 and I had hoped to finish out with a bang of a book. This is not it. I picked it because I was curious and I also thought it might be a quick read. Quick, yes. Curious? I was at first. I was flying through. Have you ever read that book that is a page turner until maybe the halfway point and then it takes a turn for the worst? For me this was it. It wasn't wonderful to begin with but I was interested enough and then it went south. I went from wanting to read quickly for a speedy finish to skimming and not caring. I feel bad because I wanted to be concerned with this character but after the first half I found him frivolous and boring.
This is supposed to be the story of Willies coming age journey from India, to London, to Africa and then Germany. Again it started a little different. The stint in London I thought was interesting and would go well. Then he went to an undisclosed country in Africa. I didn't get why the name was never mentioned. The time in Africa bored me to tears and I skimmed so many pages. It didn't make sense to me what he was doing there. There was also an awful awful lot about racial stereotypes. Indian, African, Mixed heritage, White.. There was just this unnecessary amount of talk about it. And it ended very strange. I guess one could dissect this book but frankly I'm just glad to have done with it.
2 stars. It could have.. But it didn't. It just fell flat. I might give the author another chance because I was interested in the beginning. I'm not recommending anything I give two stars.
Bad news: ending my challenge with a book I was not impressed with.
Good news: I'm a book junkie. The challenge is over but I'm still about to pick up my next book. I never stop!
Well.. I don't really say "Meh" but it is fitting so it will be used here.
**Meh!**
This is the last book to complete my reading challenge for 2014 and I had hoped to finish out with a bang of a book. This is not it. I picked it because I was curious and I also thought it might be a quick read. Quick, yes. Curious? I was at first. I was flying through. Have you ever read that book that is a page turner until maybe the halfway point and then it takes a turn for the worst? For me this was it. It wasn't wonderful to begin with but I was interested enough and then it went south. I went from wanting to read quickly for a speedy finish to skimming and not caring. I feel bad because I wanted to be concerned with this character but after the first half I found him frivolous and boring.
This is supposed to be the story of Willies coming age journey from India, to London, to Africa and then Germany. Again it started a little different. The stint in London I thought was interesting and would go well. Then he went to an undisclosed country in Africa. I didn't get why the name was never mentioned. The time in Africa bored me to tears and I skimmed so many pages. It didn't make sense to me what he was doing there. There was also an awful awful lot about racial stereotypes. Indian, African, Mixed heritage, White.. There was just this unnecessary amount of talk about it. And it ended very strange. I guess one could dissect this book but frankly I'm just glad to have done with it.
2 stars. It could have.. But it didn't. It just fell flat. I might give the author another chance because I was interested in the beginning. I'm not recommending anything I give two stars.
Bad news: ending my challenge with a book I was not impressed with.
Good news: I'm a book junkie. The challenge is over but I'm still about to pick up my next book. I never stop!
August 15, 2017
What strange, unrelatable story. I enjoyed most other characters except the main one.
I didn't get what it was about? Life? It did make me wonder what it was about, so that's good...right?
Reading other reviews here makes me feel a little better about myself, I'm not that dumb. Apparently there's a sequel. I don't want to know.
Oh, and the writing: It's very, very, blunt. Feels unemotional and distant. It doesn't flow.
Naipaul can be writing about person A on a Monday, switch to person B for about ten sentences and then just change days. Suddenly it's Tuesday. What happened to person A?! Are you allowed to do that?
I feel almost annoyed with this, but I care too little.
I didn't get what it was about? Life? It did make me wonder what it was about, so that's good...right?
Reading other reviews here makes me feel a little better about myself, I'm not that dumb. Apparently there's a sequel. I don't want to know.
Oh, and the writing: It's very, very, blunt. Feels unemotional and distant. It doesn't flow.
Naipaul can be writing about person A on a Monday, switch to person B for about ten sentences and then just change days. Suddenly it's Tuesday. What happened to person A?! Are you allowed to do that?
I feel almost annoyed with this, but I care too little.
April 1, 2012
About 50 pages into this one, I realized I didn't really like it much. Hoping it would get better (after all, it did win a Nobel for literature), I forced myself to plow on. Sadly, it was all but impossible for me to enjoy the story of this insufferably spineless protagonist and his exceptionally uneventful life.
February 1, 2023
I expected this to be better.
August 13, 2020
This novel charting the life and losses of the central character - Willie - tells an interesting and in-depth tale of a young man caught between worlds. It charts a half-life. Born of a Brahmin and low caste mother (who is painfully ridiculed by Willie's father in the first part of the book), Willie spends the novel seeking a way to find himself and - presumably - find a sense of purpose and wholeness he believes his father discarded in favour of a pitiable idleness.
Willie attempts to find himself by seeking a supposed "better life" in London, where he is greeted by an underground party scene of (rather ditsy and ignorant) white British people and those who have emigrated dancing and becoming-with one another. In this heat of freedom Willie meets a girl and runs away with her to Portuguese-run Africa full of scrubland and big, expensive houses.
I liked that the book seemed both believable and ludicrous, that it was not romantic, that the characters were not perfect but deeply flawed and seeking some kind of progression yet standing still (as we all find ourselves doing). I liked that the book showed things to me that I have never encountered - Naipaul is a good writer and this is a good book. But I want to know more about Willie's mother and sister, who became shadows in the text. I wanted Willie to be less unfair to Ana (his wife), to be less lead by lust - but perhaps this is writing that is honest. We can't always get what we want.
Willie discarded his desire to be a writer, although he had promise, because he did not have confidence. Willie was lead by sexual desire, he was cruel to his parents and unforgiving to those who loved him. Perhaps he is simply human.
Willie attempts to find himself by seeking a supposed "better life" in London, where he is greeted by an underground party scene of (rather ditsy and ignorant) white British people and those who have emigrated dancing and becoming-with one another. In this heat of freedom Willie meets a girl and runs away with her to Portuguese-run Africa full of scrubland and big, expensive houses.
I liked that the book seemed both believable and ludicrous, that it was not romantic, that the characters were not perfect but deeply flawed and seeking some kind of progression yet standing still (as we all find ourselves doing). I liked that the book showed things to me that I have never encountered - Naipaul is a good writer and this is a good book. But I want to know more about Willie's mother and sister, who became shadows in the text. I wanted Willie to be less unfair to Ana (his wife), to be less lead by lust - but perhaps this is writing that is honest. We can't always get what we want.
Willie discarded his desire to be a writer, although he had promise, because he did not have confidence. Willie was lead by sexual desire, he was cruel to his parents and unforgiving to those who loved him. Perhaps he is simply human.
October 19, 2017
Quantos de nós sentem que viveram uma vida pela metade? Serão muitos os que olham para trás e sentem que os melhores anos das suas vidas foram desperdiçados a viver as vidas de outras pessoas, sem terem a coragem de dar o salto de fé que lhes daria um leque de novas e infinitas possibilidades? Este é o subtexto desta historia desconcertante: pai e filho em permanente conflito com o que os rodeia e com as tradições que espartilham os seus sonhos, numa luta interior constante para conseguir viver as suas próprias vidas.
Para nós, portugueses, o interesse da história é reforçado pelo contexto colonial e pelas constantes referências a Portugal e ã ligação do nosso país a África e à Índia de meados do século XX. É o primeiro de dois volumes e mal posso esperar para começar a ler a segunda metade destas vidas que ainda vão a meio.
Para nós, portugueses, o interesse da história é reforçado pelo contexto colonial e pelas constantes referências a Portugal e ã ligação do nosso país a África e à Índia de meados do século XX. É o primeiro de dois volumes e mal posso esperar para começar a ler a segunda metade destas vidas que ainda vão a meio.
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