V.S. Naipaul has a reputation for courting controversy. Born in Trinidad in 1932, he is the first of
the authors on this list who is still living; he has been involved in bitter
disputes with authorial rivals and has attracted criticism for his recent
comments regarding female writers.
He has been described as being the “greatest living writer of English
prose”, yet it is difficult to grasp an understanding of the authorial
motivations that lie beneath the regular critical swipes against members of the
established literary canon (Henry James, Jane Austen and Charles Dickens are
all recent recipients of Naipaul’s contempt)
and his forays into more controversial territory (he had to pull out of
a literary event in India last year to inflammatory comments he made concerning
Islam in 2001).
Contempt seems to be an emotion that runs through In A Free State. Bobby, one of the principal protagonists, is
contemptuous towards his driving companion, the model colonial wife Linda. The soldiers in the unnamed East African
country where the novel is set show contempt towards civil servants like Bobby,
and the colonial institutions that they represent. Even the run-down state of the roads and
buildings, formerly colonial outposts and now crumbling wrecks, arguably
demonstrates a contempt on the part of the new country towards the institutions
and policies of the old rulers. In A Free State is unusual however in
that it is not just one story; the central tale is preceded by two shorter
stories which focus on people who have emigrated; the first on an Indian
servant who moves to New York, the other on two West Indian cousins who move to
the UK. In both we see contempt from the
émigrés for the new culture into which they arrive, and a yearning for that
which they have elected to leave behind.
There are also two fragments, one at the beginning of the novel and the
other at the end, where the narrator describes travelling to Egypt on a ferry
and then describes what he sees whilst touring Giza and Luxor. In both fragments he describes Egypt
post-independence in the 1950s, where again, contempt for the previous regime
is shown. This fragmentary narrative
leaves the reader uncertain of what In A
Free State is meant to represent; the abrupt end of the core narrative and
sudden move to the final fragment leaves the reader feeling that this is more
of a collection of short stories than a longer narrative, demonstrating similar
themes of post-colonialism and a yearning for the past but having little else
to unite them coherently.
The central tale describes Bobby and Linda’s drive from the
capital city to the blandly-named Southern Protectorate, in the area of the
country that its King comes from. The
King is on the run from the country’s President, who has taken power and is
looking to purge the supporters of the man who was formerly propped up by the
colonial powers that ruled the country before independence. This is redolent of real-world political
situations, where Britain, France and the USA among others all helped to keep
dictators in charge of various ‘protectorates’ for the sake of political
expediency. Bobby and Linda witness the
escalating violence first-hand, as they see people fleeing their homes, army vans
on the roads, prisoners in chains and, ultimately, the site of the apprehension
and murder of the old King. Naipaul
leaves the reader questioning whether the “free state” of the title is really
an improvement on the previous colonial regime, as Bobby and Linda’s journey
becomes increasingly dangerous. They are
attempting to return to the civil servants’ compound where they live, and
consider themselves neutral in this civil conflict. Neither character is particularly likeable;
Bobby is frequently taciturn and contradictory and on two occasions he attempts
to seduce young African boys, while Linda anticipates the opportunity for
extra-marital activities on the journey and is portrayed by Naipaul as being
frivolous and naive. Neither is able to
see that they are part of a colonial machine that is despised by the indigenous
peoples of the country, and there is a sense of looming menace and building
pressure throughout the novel which suggests that the whole edifice will be
swept away on a tide of anti-colonial violence.
Naipaul has written much about colonialism and Africa and
was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001, thirty years after winning
the Booker. In A Free State is not so much a study of colonialism or Africa but
can be said to be a study of how those who were part of the colonising forces
absolve themselves of the collective guilt they feel for the brutal treatment of
those they ruled over. Bobby and Linda
pretend to be neutral but at points they show that they do not really believe
this to be the case and Naipaul’s ultimate contempt for his protagonists
demonstrates that, ultimately, we must all choose sides, either the safety of
the compound or the violence of the streets, if we are to be authentic to our
beliefs.
