In a Free State

The central novel from V.S. Naipaul’s Booker Prize-winning narrative of displacement, published for the first time in a stand-alone edition.

In a Free State: The Novel is set in Africa, in a place like Uganda or Rwanda, and its two main characters are English. They had once found liberation in Africa. But now Africa is going sour on them. The land is no longer safe, and at a time of tribal conflict they have to make a long drive to the safety of their compound.

At the end of this drive - the narrative tight, wonderfully constructed, the formal and precise language always instilled with violence and rage - we know everything about the English characters, the African country, and the Idi Amin-like future awaiting it.

This is one of V. S. Naipaul’s greatest novels, hard but full of pity. It won the Booker Prize, in its original edition, in 1971.