Magic Seeds

by V.S.Naipaul (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $5.15

  Willie Chandran is a man who has allowed one identity after another to be thrust upon him. In his early forties, after a peripatetic life, he succumbs to the encouragement of his sister - and his own listlessness - and joins an underground movement in India. But years of revolutionary campaigns and then prison convince him that the revolution 'had nothing to do with what we were fighting for', and he feels himself further than ever 'from his own history.' When he returns to Britain where, thirty years before, his wanderings began, Willie encounters a country that has turned its back on its past and, like him, has become detached from its own history. He endures the indignities of a culture dissipated by reform and compromise until, in a moment of grotesque revelation - a tour de force of parodic savagery from our most visionary of writers - Willie comes to an understanding that might finally allow him to release his true self. Praise for Magic Seeds : 'Original, ruthlessly honest, intellectually stimulating and masterfully written'. The Times . 'A radical further step in one of the great imaginative careers of our time ... Magic Seeds demands our attention, and nothing more authoritative will be published this year'. Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph . 'Spare, concentrated and always capable of breaking out into extraordinary flashes of sympathy, awareness, and insight'. D.J. Taylor, Literary Review .

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.28

  Willy Chandra is a man who has allowed one identity after another to be thrust upon him. Now, in his early 40s, after a peripatetic life, he joins an underground movement in India ostensibly devoted to unfettering the lower castes. Now after seven year of revolutionary campaigns is the revolution really to do with the village people.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $3.28

  Willy Chandran - whom we first met in Half a Life - is a man who has allowed one identity after another to be thrust upon him. Now, in his early 40s, after a peripatetic life, he succumbs to the demanding encouragement of his sister - and his own listlessness - and joins an underground movement in India ostensibly devoted to unfettering the lower castes. But seven years of revolutionary campaigns and several years in jail convince him that the revolution 'had nothing to do with the village people we said we were fighting for', and he feels himself further than ever 'from his own history and...from the ideas of himself that might have come to him with that history'. When he returns to England where, 30 years before, his psychological and physical wanderings began, he finds the fruit of another unexpected social revolution (more magic seeds), and he comes to see himself as a man 'serving an endless prison sentence' - a revelation that may finally release him into his true self. Magic Seeds is a masterpiece, written with all the depth and resonance, the clarity of vision and precision of language that are the hallmarks of this brilliant writer.