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      Half a Life

      by V.S. Naipaul
      Published
      Oct 2001
      Main Genre
      General Fiction General Fiction
      Rating
      Pages
      300
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      About This Book

      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.

      Genres & Themes

      Genres

      General Fiction

      Subgenres

      Literary

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      Paperback

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      Sep 2002 Picador (UK) ISBN 0330485172
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      Oct 2002 Vintage ISBN 067697502X
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      Oct 2002 Vintage ISBN 037570728X
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      May 2011 Picador ISBN 033052285X
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      Hardcover

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      First Edition Oct 2001 Knopf ISBN 0375407375
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      Oct 2001 Picador (UK) ISBN 0330485164
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      eBook

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      Apr 2009 Picador ISBN 1743295898
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      Apr 2009 Picador ISBN 1447209370
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      Apr 2009 Vintage ISBN B0027MJTOM
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      Apr 2009 Vintage Canada ISBN 0307370593
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      Apr 2009 Knopf ISBN 0307556565
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      Audio

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      Oct 2001 MacMillan Audio ISBN 0333906497
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      Sep 2018 Blackstone Audiobooks ISBN 1538555042
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      Sep 2018 Blackstone Audiobooks ISBN 1538555050
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      Sep 2018 Blackstone Audio, Inc. ISBN B07H5Q8KRZ
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      Large Print

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      Hardcover
      Mar 2002 Center Point ISBN 1585471763
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