In a Free State - A Novel With Two Supporting Narratives

Author: V S NaipaulPublisher: Picador IndiaYear: 2002Language: EnglishPages: 247ISBN/UPC (if available): 0330487051 DescriptionThis is one of V S Naipaul's greatest novels, hard but full of pity. It won the Booker Prize in 1971.In Egypt, in the Valley of the Kings, the writer sees the tomb paintings,. 'Perhaps that had been the only pure time, at the beginning, when the ancient artist, knowing no other land, had learned to look at his own and seen it as complete. . .'The theme is displacement, the yearning for the good place in someone else’s land, the attendant heartache.The Indian servant in Washington becomes an American citizen but feels he has ceased to be a part of the flow. The disturbed Asian West Indian in London, in Jail for murder, has never really known where he is.The central novel changes gear. It is set in Africa, in a place like Uganda or Rwanda, and its two main characters are English. They had once found liberation in Africa. But now Africa is going sour on them