In a Free State and Other Stories - Softcover

Naipaul, V. S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014003711X ISBN 13: 9780140037111

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1977

Synopsis

The novel is set in a free state of Africa at a time of civil conflict when a once-ruling tribe is being decimated.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

s rendered our boundariless, post-colonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives.

In the beginning it is just a car trip through Africa. Two English people--Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys, and Linda, a supercilious “compound wife” [117]-- are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital [111]. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin’s Uganda. [111-12, 120, 130-1, 150, 178, 220-40] And the farther Naipaul’s protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims. Alongside this Conradian tour de force are four incisive portraits

From the Back Cover:

“V. S. Naipaul tells stories which show us ourselves and the reality we live in. His use of language is as precise as it is beautiful.” — The London Times

“A Tolstoyan spirit....The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist.” —John Updike, The New Yorker

“The coolest literary eye and the most lucid prose we have.” —The New York

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1977
• ISBN 10: 014003711X
• ISBN 13: 9780140037111
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 246