{"product_id":"9780375707285","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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\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":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47020624937200,"sku":"9780375707285","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780375707285_p0.jpg?v=1763691512","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780375707285","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}