Recommended by my mom who thought it was great. The 3 stars is really provisional here. I feel I need to think about the stories more. I started reading the book a second time right after finishing it so I could maybe get a better grasp. I also read the reviews here and some other places on the web.The prologue: I really liked this part. I felt Naipaul did a great job giving the feel of the place and the dynamics among the people. I felt I could relate to the tramp, as well as to the viewpoint of the narrator. The boat is full of a very international mix of people and it's interesting how easily people establish a sort of society. The tramp is just very disconnected from everybody, but is also probably borderline mentally ill. It's unclear specifically what he did during the night to disturb the rest of his cabin mates. The Yugoslav is an instance of a loner (for whatever reason) that doesn't stick out the way the tramp does. I thought it was interesting that everybody has a very sharp national identity except for the tramp who might be English and the narrator who is undefined. Also why is the tramp English? The English who till recently have been so powerful in the world and as a major colonial power a bully. It's also interesting that when the tramp lists where he's been, the places except for Egypt are English speaking. It's obviously a story about the cruelty of people to someone who disturbs them. There's a general lack of sympathy, many people just coming to watch them mess with him. The narrator himself says that he's afraid to get involved with the tramp. Maybe it's about a loss of privelige. The tramp is old and maybe used to a certain kind of world order that is passing. These people don't respect his Englishness. I don't know, probably worth some more thought.One Out of Many: I think in some ways this was the easiest story to read, but I really didn't respect it much. I felt the whole character of Santos was overdone in his absurd naïveté. I felt it was just an exaggerated characture of an Indian immigrant. One point that really stuck out was when Priya shows him a room and there's this really dumb misunderstanding about whether he was being offered the cupboard or the room. I just felt that "joke" is so old I really felt strange that Naipaul actually used it. The same thing with the "weed". I felt that was another very cliched joke. The story wasn't all bad and there were some interesting things about the emotions Santos goes through after he leaves his first employer. I also thought the ending was interesting but on the whole I didn't really find Santos' character to be very believable. I think that despite the fact that the ending isn't a feel good ending, still wasn't really convincing and I don't really feel I understand what Santos is saying there as part of an evolving character.Tell me who to kill: this one is tough. It is hard to read because it is so negative. I think it's well written just because of how effectively it communicates those feelings. It's hard to say who to blame. Obviously he has a rough life, but he also seems to take everything so hard. He seems trapped by the bleakness of his choices but also by his own mind. In some ways there doesn't seem to be much to take out of it except the desperation of some lives. One major point I don't get is just what the thread about visiting the college friend who get's a knife stuck in him is. Is it a dream, a vision, or real? It doesn't make much sense to me as real, but not sure how to understand it beyond that. I feel that more could be said about all the stuff that goes on with the narrator but somehow not quite sure how to do it myself.In a Free State: this one is also difficult to read due to the unpleasantness of feelings aroused. In terms of writing I thought this was the best of the pieces. The description of the landscapes that they pass through was great. The dialogue was very interesting but also difficult. I felt that the dialogue was disjointed. I don't mean that as a criticism because I think it was intentional and effectively communicated the feeling that these two were talking to each other with somewhat cross purposes. There is an interesting sense on the one hand that they are both part of a fairly small world and so some of that disjointed feeling comes from the fact that they share this context and so that common experience fills in some of the gaps. On the other hand that disjointedness also expresses that they are somewhat in conflict in terms of their views. So when one person says something, the other will reply in a way that goes off in another direction. At one point Linda talks about a conversation as a chess game and in some ways that seems to fit how the two are relating to each other. They are both playing this game of being provocative within the constraints of their etiquette. I think another level of complexity in the dialogue was the psychological dimension. That is, as the reader we are learning more about the character or psychology of the two as the story unfolds. So there's the sense in which the dialogue and the responses they have to what is said is revealing their self deceptions as well as their more conscious commitments. Obviously, there is also a big social dimension to what takes place. The two main characters are finding a place, Bobby feels quite committed to Africa, while Linda seems to see herself as more of a visitor, Africa as more incidental as setting for her adventures. On the other hand there is the actual political situation. The post colonial scene. Two tribes fighting for control of a country that only really exists as a colonial structure. I think I had more trouble understanding this dimension of the story. I felt I was able to key into Bobby and Linda's psychology to a decent degree particularly after the second reading, but still feel vague about the social commentary. I'm not sure what the significance of the journey itself is, nor many of the incidents along the way. So I guess my 3 star rating is due to a mix of factors. The writing particularly in the title piece is great, but the subjective experience wasn't really pleasant due to the unpleasant feelings roused by much of the book, and the sense that I don't understand the book particularly the title piece as well as could be hoped.
I must confess that I do not not enjoy reading V.S. Naipaul. I find his fiction overly pessimistic and bitter, his characters unappealing, passive victims whose lives seem exercises in futility. In a sense, like Joseph Conrad, he explores the backwaters of colonialism (or post-colonialism in Naipual´s case), but whereas most of Conrad´s main characters have a spark of courage, or decency or some positive human value, Naipaul´s alienated and displaced characters find it difficult to even sustain petty or mediocre aspirations.In spite of my personal dislikes, V.S. Naipaul must be considered an important writer because of his deftness in portraying the loneliness, the unsatisfied, and perhaps unsatisfiable, yearning for belonging of the expatriate, the emigrant, the deraciné, whose roots never quite take hold again, who cannot even romanticize his loss of place in the world and who never shakes off his prejudices.In these writings, freedom is thrust upon characters and countries, it is unwelcome, a burden and, ultimately, a charade. Freedom is a state of temporary suspension at the tip of a wave about to come crashing down to leave only flotsam and debris in its wake.In hindsight it can be argued that the novel which gives the book its title is a study for Naipaul´s more accomplished 1989 novel, A Bend in the River, even though the point of view shifts from one work to another.Tell me who to kill featuring two West Indian inmigrants in the UK, explores pent-up, smouldering rage and resentment as well as the frustration of well-intentioned but ultimately unreal expectations pinned on a son or a brother to escape the trap of poverty and exploitation. It is about what it feels like to be driven to scrabble to overcome an unsurmountable wall. As the narrator puts it: “We all come out of the same pot, but some people move ahead and some people get left behind. Some people get left behind so far they don´t know and they stop caring.” The tragedy for the narrator is that “I know I miss out. I know how much I lose when I have to stop school [...] I feel I see things so much better than the rest of my family; they always tell me I am very touchy. But I feel I become like the head of a family. I get the ambition and the shame for all of them. The ambition is like shame, andthe shame is like a secret, and it is always hurting. Even now, when it is all over, it can start hurting again.”One out of many is perhaps the best piece of writing in the book and has been deservedly anthologized many times. On a surface level it is about the culture shock that befalls an Indian servant who accompanies his master to Washington, runs away, becomes an illegal alien, discovers an unwelcome and very lonely freedom he doesn´t know what to do with. In this case, the sense of freedom as illusion, is prefigured by a startling intuition about the nature of luck: “I saw then that the victory I had had was not something I had worked for, but luck; and that luck was only fate´s cheating, giving an illusion of power.” On a deeper level it is about what freedom and choice means for those who have freedom thrust upon them, who did not work for it or even attempt to understand their own prejudices and thus for those whom it catches unprepared to exercise it. Naipaul´s pessimistic conclusion is that, in this case, freedom is an illusion, and that the only freedom that can be exercised is the freedom to pick the wave in whose wake to drift along.The first journal entry simply sets the stage and the pointless, cruel game at its heart reads like something out of Beckett. The only Englishman is an old tramp, bereft of all imperial trappings, incomprehensible in his pretenses to the rest of the motley set of middle eastern, mediterranean and american passengers and uncomprehending of the lives of others, he simply becomes the butt of a joke to fill in time.The final journal entry provides is a fine story in itself, with its sense of the the impermanence and empty vanities of different, and ultimately meaningless, empires set amongst the tourist-riddled ruins of Luxor: “So many empires had come here. Not far from where we were was the colossus on whose shin the Emperor Hadrian had caused to be carved verses in praise of himself, to conmemorate his visit. On the other bank, not far from the Winter Palace, was a stone with a rougher Roman inscription marking the southern limit of the Empire, defining an area of retreat. Now another, more remote empire [China] was announcing itself. A medal, a postcard; and all that was asked in return was anger and a sense of injustice.” The narrator harks back to the arts of Ancient Egypt and wonders: “Perhaps that vision of the land, in which the Nile was only water, a blue-green chevron, had always been a fabrication, a cause for yearning, something for the tomb” and the story ends in a fit of gloom as the narrator looks forwards to Egypt´s defeat in the Sinai: “Seventeen months later these men, or men like them, were to know total defeat in the desert; and news photographs taken from helicopters flying down low were to show them lost, trying to walk back home, casting long shadows on the sand.”
What do You think about In A Free State (2002)?
I probably ought to re-read this as I don't think I had enough knowledge to understand it at the time I first read. I only remember the first story, One Out of Many which has made an indelible impression on me. Naipaul is masterful in telling the incisive tale of servitude transported, giving each character due measure of inherent decency, self-interest and flawed humanity. The uncomfortable meeting of worlds is all the more resonant because stories from the point of view of servants are so unusual. Over and over I was confronted with my own privilege and prejudice, and forced to think again. As a story of emancipation and readjustment, it's entirely without utopian illusions. The happy ending hits such a grim note to me it's almost unbearable. I guess I just have a very different world-view to Naipaul
—Zanna
Facts are facts: Naipaul's prose is extraordinarily exquisite. I caught myself thinking a few times while reading this that reading this is better than being high.That is some amazing power of prose right there.Before I picked this up (on the merit of it being a big influence on Kiran Desai's Inheritance of Loss) I knew next to nothing about Naipaul aside that he was considered a great writer. Now, he is on my must read list & went out and got my second book from him today.But this novel is a set of three stories of three different immigrant experiences. And each is hard to read in their own ways. The first involves a domestic from India traveling to Washington DC and his hesitancy with freedom. It was by far my favorite of the three. His sense of displacement thundered off the page and at times it was hard to breathe as you read his words of self imposed isolation and servitude that he wore like the condemned would wear a noose. His emotions are palpable and echo off the page. This was a great damn story and some of the best writing that I have ever read.The second story was lackluster in comparison to the first. But it was in no way bad. It was actually hard to read, with some words seeming more than a bit out of place, but with an unreliable narrator who has had the only the most rudimentary of educations, this is totally appropriate.The third and major story was all sorts of horrifying. It deals with two British Expats in a nameless state in Africa. And neither are what you would call of redeeming characters. They both think of themselves as caring people that are worlds better than their colonizing forefathers. On the course of their two day car ride back to their gated colony they prove just how awful they are. How they view the natives as savages or worse. They even seem to take joy in berating them, subjecting them to the most awful tasks. They never look upon the natives as equals, yet time after time reject any responsibility for the way things are.This sounds awful. And it is. But Naipaul writes it so well that you are compelled to read it, cringing at the horror of their lives. This is nasty fiction at its best. And should be required reading for anyone who is thinking about visiting, let alone living in a foreign land. Just to help ensure that this disturbing behavior molts from our collective consciousnesses. Having been living in foreign lands now for the last year, I am afraid the lessons within are not taking.This is confronting fiction. This is great fiction. This is why we read.
—randy
Taut with use of simple language, this is a dark, disturbing read that portrays a struggle for power that involves the reader in it's complicity. This version contains two narratives to support the main story, 'In a Free State'. Based on displacement of location and a view of post-colonialisation and it repurcussions in terms of criminality erupting into violence. 'In A Free State' unravels itself across the landscape of Africa to a bloody climax which itself is distant and clinical as a mirror to a homeland ruled upon by dictatorship.
—Laurentbiragduriaud
