

In a Free State
Author: V. S. Naipaul
Narrator: Vikas Adam, Neil Shah, Simon Vance
Unabridged: 9 hr 4 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 05/08/2018
Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction
Author: V. S. Naipaul
Narrator: Vikas Adam, Neil Shah, Simon Vance
Unabridged: 9 hr 4 min
Format: Digital Audiobook Download
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Published: 05/08/2018
Categories: Fiction, Literary Fiction
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
“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)