SOURCE: Yardley, Jonathan. Review of Half a Life, by V. S. Naipaul. Washington Post Book World (21 October 2001): 2.

In the following positive review, Yardley delineates the key thematic concerns of Half a Life.

V. S. Naipaul marks his rise to Nobel laureate, however accidentally, with a strange new novel [Half a Life] that is at once of a piece with and apart from most of his previous work. On the one hand it is a continuation of his preoccupation with the innumerable questions raised by cultural and racial identity; on the other hand its spare, melancholy, elusive, somewhat heavily ironic tone contrasts with the more animated quality of his best fiction (A House for Mr. Biswas, for example), and the graphic sex with which its final sections are filled is a stark departure from his almost priggish treatment of the subject previously.

The heart of the novel can be...