Picador, Oct 2001, $24.00

V.S. Naipaul (A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, Between Father and Son) reads from Half a Life, his first novel in six years. It is the story of Willie Chandran, whose father, heeding the call of Mahatma Gandhi, turned his back on his Brahmin heritage and married a woman of lower caste - a disastrous union he would live to regret. When Willie himself reaches manhood, his flight from the travails of his mixed birth takes him from India to London, where in the shabby haunts of immigrants and literary bohemians he affects a new identity. This is what happens to him as he tries to defeat self-doubt and struggles to become a writer - and, close to exhaustion, unexpectedly receives the love of a kind woman. A masterpiece of economy and emotional nuance, Half a Life is an indelible feat of the imagination. V. S. Naipaul is the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Half a Life will be available in October, 2001 from Alfred A. Knopf.

Boston Public Library, Rabb Hall. 6PM. No tickets required. Co-sponsored by HBS and the BPL.

photo credit: Jerry Bauerr

Other titles by V.S. Naipaul: A House for Mr. Biswas Between Father and Son The Mimic Men Beyond Belief A Bend in the River A Way in the World