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.

The 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, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career.

奈保尔(Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul),英籍印度裔作家。

1932年8月17日出生于中美洲特立尼达和多巴哥。18岁赴牛津大学求学,获得文学学士学位后定居英国。曾任BBC“加勒比之声”栏目主持人3年。

游走世界各地写作多年,批判发展中社会的精神和物质的双重匮乏,语多辛辣诙谐。主要作品包括《灵异推拿师》(约翰·卢埃林·里斯纪念奖),《米格尔大街》(萨莫塞特·毛姆奖),《黑暗之地》,《印度：一个伤痕累累的文明》,《自由国度》(1971年布克奖),《河湾》,《浮生》,《魔种》等。

1990年获英国皇室封爵；1993年,成为英国大卫·柯恩文学奖首位获奖者,该奖旨在表彰“尚在人世的英国作家一生的成就”。

2001年,因“作品中兼具犀利的叙述与正直的洞察,迫使我们正视那些被压抑的历史的存在”,被授予诺贝尔文学奖。