A review by ritapontotomas
Half a Life by V.S. Naipaul

4.0

When I first started reading this book, I had no idea how it would turned out to be. The book was a gift someone gave me in 2002, I didn’t know who Naipaul was or why would he have been awarded a Nobel Literature prize. And most certainly I didn’t know that this book would end up to also be about the Wars of Liberation (Guerras da Libertação), particularly in Mozambique, in the late times of the Portuguese colonial empire. Naipaul writes magnificently about growing up and growing apart from your origins. And it also sheds light about what someone feels when they are doomed to live only half-lives. From India to England, from Portugal to Mozambique, this book was a great travel inwards and outwards.