Customer Reviews

In a Free State

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

So said the disillusioned and dejected West Indian when confronted with the reality of his ruined life in London. His brother had taken advantage of him, and having denied himself for his brother's sake, the betrayal was all the more bitter. Hate and revenge are now his primary emotions and he shows this with his words "tell me who to kill", the title of one of this book's five stories. The stories are principally about the emotional weight carried by strangers in foreign lands (West Indians in England, Indians in the U.S, English in Africa), and the cultural anomie that comes with it.

This book which won England's Booker prize in 1971 is comprised of two novellas, the short-story that is the book's title and a prologue and epilogue which are in the narrator's voice and describe impressions from his travel journal. Besides exploring the theme of alienation, the common thread that connects these stories is the search for what it is that causes the destructive impulses that lie deep within us to rise to the surface.

In a more recent book, READING AND WRITING, Naipaul in talking about his art said "one day, in my almost fixed depression, I began to see what my material might be" In homage to his brooding inspiration this book then is an excellent exploration of Naipaul's well known darker themes. What makes us cruel to one another? Why do we fear, hate, and oppress others? The stories are harsh and imaginatively cruel: The irrational beating of a hapless tramp and the whipping of some poor Egyptian children who were scrounging for sandwiches tossed by Italian tourists.

Naipaul is genre-bending with his fiction and where others may feel compelled to offer hope and a romantic denouement to their story, this author does not subscribe to such illusions about the human heart. At least not in any obvious way. The positive message is there in the title story, it's just hidden. Bobby and Linda are seeking refuge in the last redoubt of Englishness left in Africa. Like all the other characters in the book they are seperated from their familiar traditions and society. Far from being alienated however they have something within - a sense of self. It gives them wholeness. Here we see the true potential of the human heart to be IN A FREE STATE even when all around us is chaos. As pessimistic a view as this book generally is, I still found it entertaining and because Naipaul offers such a small token of hope, it makes it all the more precious.

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us" (Franz Kafka)

The journey of an immigrant landing in the United States for the first time begins long before he sees the statue of liberty and ends long after he qualifies for his first passport. The decision to leave home, leave culture and comfort, the excited transition to a brave new world, and then the acclimatization, the realization that the rest of your life will occur in this new, lonely culture.
V.S. Naipaul's short story "One out of Many", from his collection In a Free State, eloquently chronicles one man's journey to a new life in the United States. We meet Santosh, a poorly-educated servant to a diplomat, and Naipaul beautifully relates his home, his culture, and his community. However, Santosh leaves India with his master to go to Washington D.C., in search, as we all are, of opportunities and of the land of plenty. However, Santosh's journey not only destroys his painful idealism but also raises important questions about identity, both cultural and personal.
The character of Santosh, ill-educated, painfully naïve to American ways, learns much about the United States, befriending a black woman, experiencing the Washington race riots, and sadly, becoming more and more alienated from this world he thought he would embrace so perfectly. The contrast of Indian society with the American way of life leaves Santosh alienated, but also presents to the reader the dilemma of cross-culture assimilation. Should one assimilate into a different culture? Is it possible to truly accept yourself when your identity depends on a community thousands of miles away?
"One out of Many" never tries to represent an entire immigrant population, nor does it make a political statement in that explicit sense. It's simply the story of Santosh, his journey , what he finds, and does not find, in the land of riches, in America. Excellent, relevant reading.

In a Free Country is a collection of short-stories highly skilled in the novelist's craftsmanship. The book displays three striking features: the paradox of seeking freedom in a strange land; the conflict between different cultures and different ideology accordingly. It is a reverse edition of A Passage to India. As in his other novels, V. S. Naipaul offers readers sour-sweat experiences of modern wanderers and hence stirs the readers into profound thinking. But all the activity, no matter how different from reader to reader, from culture to culture, takes place under the cover of simple and uniquely ironical language the author employs. "One out of Many" is the most distinctive piece in the collection. The bitter-taste humor makes the reader laugh first and immediately feel guilty of himself. "Tell Me Who to Kill" presents a benevolent and a tyrannical Indian brother on the verge of fighting to maintain the old culture to his brother and himself in a new country while "In a Free Country" is like a longest journey across an alienate land, nothing is settled there, even the natives. This text refers to the paperback edition of this title.

In a Free State won the Booker Prize in 1971 as the best novel by a Commonwealth author. The books consists of two short stories, two travel pieces and the title novella.

The 120 odd page novella, "In a Free State," describes a visit to a remote hotel deep in the African bush. Two Europeans travel overland over rutted roads to a run down deserted hotel. Bobby and Linda travel as a couple but Bobby prefers men. He tries to seduce the African servant boy but is rebuffed. This book marks Naipaul complete departure from the folksy half-joking style of his earliest works. There's no warmth or humor just a cold depiction early post-colonial Africa.

"One Out of Many," a thirty page short story, is more in the style of his earliest works: "A House for Mr. Biswas," "The Mystic Masseur, " and "Miguel Street." It tells the story of Santosh, a poor Hindu who accompanies his employer from Bombay to Washington, where the employer has taken up a diplomatic posting. Santosh had slept on the sidewalk in Bombay, that being impermissible in Washington, his boss generously gives him use of a walk closet as his sleeping quarters. He misses the companionship of sleeping on the Bombay sidewalks under the stars with his friends. He runs away from his boss, to whom he owes his plane fare from India and takes a job at a newly opened Indian restaurant. Santosh is terrified by the race riots that erupt in Washington. He meets a hubshi (black) woman and is disgusted at himself for having sex with her. He has some money because he sells some of the weed he has brought with him from India. This weed, which grows wild and free for the gathering in India, is marijuana. He is so socially inept that he buys a bright green suit. He becomes wise to the ways of the world and demands a raise from his restaurateur boss who has been paying him miserably. All the while he is afraid his old employer will come to take him back or have him deported. On the advice of his new boss he marries the hubshi woman and becomes a U.S. citizen, thereby solving all his problems. The fact that Santosh has a wife and children back in his home village in India doesn't matter.

A very funny touching story that would have made a great novel, maybe titled: "A Green Card for Mr. Santosh." I liked this better than the title novella which is dark, gloomy and has no real action: Bobby and Linda drive through the African bush country, they stay at a run down hotel, they walk through the town one night. That's it!

The other short story is unmemorable. The two travel narratives dealing with sightseeing trips to Egypt are very good and are much like Naipaul's two Islamic travel books for their insightful and critical look at a strange culture.

THis collection is one of Naipaul's darkest. While I dutifully plowed through it, I was depressed by the emptiness and psycholigical terror of just about every story. THe Novella of the title is a sad journey in Africa made by two residents of a roped-off European area, through the background of appalling civil war that eventually touches them. They are mediocrities with nowhere else to go, one the aging wife of a has-been journalist, the other a man who exploits poverty-stricken male prostitutes. THe other stories are similarly bleak. One tells of a beaten-down man who is trying to help his brother as they struggle to emigrate to England. Another recounts the misadventures of an Indian man who moves to Washington, DC and marries an American black woman by default.

It is a strange collection of stories and travel, a testament to despair and chaos. Naipaul's other books are better and have far more humor.

The main story in this book exactly describes the rapid deterioration that occurred in Africa after colonial rule ended.

I lived in Africa during this period and reading the book was like reliving the experience.

When I read some of the other reviews I wonder if the people who wrote them understood the book? Bobby and Linda are not the last Europeans in Africa (that comment made me laugh).

Bobby and Linda's husband are English and are working for the Ugandan King as technical advisors for radio communication.

They are both very interesting characters...Bobby blind to anything negative about Africans and Linda who has already sized up the situation as dangerous and hopeless.

Naipaul's writing craft is flawless and beautiful. He will often tie the psychological (for want of a better word) situation to key visual items.. a chipped ceramic tea cup etc...

Someone needs to tell the truth about Africa and Naipaul does.

This book is made up of a short Prologue and Epilogue, and three short stories, the last of which, called "In A Free State," taking more than half of the pages.

This first story is the best. It is a fictionalization of a Uganda-like state whose Idi Amin-like despot president takes over the country, seen through the eyes of two white English folk who are driving across the country in an afternoon. This story builds suspense well and the "reward" of a little bit of action toward the end.

The first story is interesting as well, about an Indian man trying to make it in the US. However, the second, "Tell Me Who To Kill" is the weakest, despite the intriguing title. It seems to have very little point aside from what Naipaul has done in the past, and his great writing skills are ripped to shreds because the story is written in a simple dialect. I would recommend reading this book, skipping or quickly skimming the second story. If it had been taken out I would have probably given the book an extra star.

This is a well-written work by a master artist, but it is more in an experimental vein. It is a very strange book to read. The first story about a poor Indian immigrant to the US is interesting and fizzles to an end. The second, about Caribbean immigrants to UK is also cryptic and strange. I did not get the fact that the leading man was in jail for murder. Other reviews on Amazon.com informed me of this fact. The title piece is a strange dream about two whites on a road trip in an African country that is erupting into civil war. Nothing really happens, the arguments are prickly and the ending is mystifying. A bizarre book to read.

In V.S. Naipaul's novel all main characters are looking and longing for (a little) freedom: the emigrants, the colonists, the tourists and the universal freedom seeker, the tramp (`I think of myself as a citizen of the world.')

But are they finding freedom, living in freedom, creating freedom?

The tourists are bored and indifferent, even when, as a tourist show, Egyptian children are whipped while fighting for food (their freedom) thrown to them by cynical foreign bystanders.

The tramp is despised for his deviant behavior, his smell and ragged clothes. The other passengers on a boat make a laughing stock of him.

For the colonists (`You came for the freedom, though.'), the settler grandeur is lost. There is only hate (`I hated this place from the first day, because I felt I had no right to be among those people.') or brutal force (`Every night you know they're beating someone to death').

The emigrant, the Indian cook who follows his master to the `land of freedom', sums it all up: `All that freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a number of years. Then it will be over.'

So, it's only an illusion. `Everybody just lies and lies and lies.'

Although `we all come from the same pot', we encounter everywhere hate, jealousy, resentment, racism, stupidity (`It is the poor who always want to keep down the poor.'), prejudice (`They think that because we are a poor country, we are all the same.') and resignation (`Some people get left behind so far they don't know and stop caring.')

Let's face the truth, for `the only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.'

Alternating humor, sarcasm and cynicism, V.S. Naipaul tried to open our eyes on the world stage, our way of life and our cynical and irresponsible behavior in the face of `when it will be over'.

A great book by a great writer. Highly recommended.

The novella recounts every boring second of a two day drive across Africa. Nothing much happens. The driver and the passenger don't much like each other, which might have made their conversations interesting, but no. They tediously repeated the same ideas over and over. Reading the book felt as monotonous and boring as taking a long car trip. Toward the end I just skimmed in the hope of speeding things along. Dreadfully dull.