{"product_id":"books-half-a-life-by-v-s-naipaul","title":"Half a Life","description":"In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul has produced his finest novel to date, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe 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, \u003cb\u003eHalf a Life\u003c\/b\u003e represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career.","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53768052769041,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780375407376.jpg?v=1783941690","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/books-half-a-life-by-v-s-naipaul","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}