In a Free State, V. S. Naipaul
In a Free State, V. S. Naipaul
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
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In a Free State

Author: V. S. Naipaul

Narrator: Vikas Adam, Neil Shah, Simon Vance

Unabridged: 9 hr 4 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 05/08/2018


Synopsis

No writer has rendered our boundaryless, postcolonial world more acutely or prophetically than V. S. Naipaul, or given its upheavals such a hauntingly human face. A perfect case in point is this riveting novel, a masterful and stylishly rendered narrative of emigration, dislocation, and dread, accompanied by four supporting narratives.On a road trip through Africa, two English people—Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious “compound wife”—are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin’s Uganda. And the farther Naipaul’s protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims. Alongside this Conradian tour de force are four incisive portraits of men seeking liberation far from home.By turns funny and terrifying, sorrowful and unsparing, In a Free State is Naipaul at his best.

About V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) was the author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. His honors include the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize, the Trinity Cross, and a knighthood for services to literature. He was named a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 and went to Oxford on a scholarship in 1950.

About Vikas Adam

Vikas Adam is a classically trained actor with numerous credits in stage, film, commercials, and television, in addition to his over two hundred recorded audiobooks. His narrations have garnered numerous awards and nominations, including AudioFile Earphones Awards, various Best of the Year lists, and the prestigious Audie Award. He was an inaugural inductee into the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame.

About Neil Shah

Neil Shah is an Audie-nominated and multi AudioFile Earphones Award–winning narrator who has recorded over 250 audiobooks spanning across almost every genre, as well as numerous long-form journalism articles. AudioFile magazine has commended him for “an absolutely mesmerizing listening experience” and as “an outstanding narrator who adds a healthy dose of personality to each of the characters.” As a classically trained actor, he has appeared off Broadway and on regional stages, as well as in film and television. He records from his home studio in Oregon’s beautiful Wine Country.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance is the critically acclaimed narrator of approximately 400 audiobooks, winner of 27 AudioFile Earphones Awards, and a 12-time Audie Award-winner. He won an Audie in 2006 in the category of Science Fiction and was named the 2011 Best Voice in Biography and History and in 2010 Best Voice in Fiction by AudioFile magazine.   Vance has been a narrator for the past 25 years, and also worked for many years as a BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London.  Some of his best-selling and most praised audiobook performances include Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies (an Audie award-winner), Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander series (all 21 titles), the new productions of Frank Herbert’s original Dune series, and Rob Gifford’s China Road (an AudioFile 2007 Book of the Year). Vance lives near San Francisco with his wife and two sons.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Praveen on December 01, 2022

Bobby Said, “I never learned to drive until I came out here. But during my illness I always consoled myself with the fantasy of driving through a cold and rainy night, driving endless miles, until I came to a cottage and right at the top of a hill. There would be a fire there and it would be warm a......more

Goodreads review by Kiran on April 06, 2024

A well deserved 4⭐️ read! I can't believe it took me this long to finally read a book by acclaimed Trinidadian author V. S. Naipaul! For some uncanny reason his writing has not come on my reading path until now.In a Free State was therefore my first foray into Naipaul's literary world, and I was pl......more

Goodreads review by Alejandro on July 18, 2012

I must confess that I do not not enjoy reading V.S. Naipaul. I find his fiction overly pessimistic and bitter, his characters unappealing, passive victims whose lives seem exercises in futility. In a sense, like Joseph Conrad, he explores the backwaters of colonialism (or post-colonialism in Naipual......more


Quotes

“Listeners will be spellbound as three narrators draw them into a journey of anarchy. Narrators Vikas Adam, Neil Shah, and Simon Vance embody a wide range of characters who are living in or visiting a fictional African country as it disintegrates into violence. The sum of their contributions is to give listeners a growing sense of doom as a tourist couple, played in arch British tones by Simon Vance, drives deeper into a country that is coming apart. Adam’s and Shah’s performances serve as a kind of Greek chorus, representing people of multiple ethnicities, including Africans and Indians. This is a rich listening experience that fans of world literature will enjoy.” AudioFile

“V. S. Naipaul tells stories which show us ourselves and the reality we live in. His use of language is as precise as it is beautiful.” Times (London)


Awards

  • Man Booker Prize