In a Free State
About this audiobook
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 the author
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 who has performed on stage, film, and television. He has also recorded over one hundred audiobooks, for which he has garnered numerous awards and nominations, including Earphones, various Best of the Year lists, and the Audie Award. When not recording, acting, or directing, he can be found lecturing in the Theater Department at UCLA.
Neil Shah is an Audie Award-nominated narrator and voiceover artist who has recorded numerous audiobooks, including I Am an Executioner by Rajesh Parameswaran, The Hundred-Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais, and Stringer: A Reporter's Journey In the Congo by Anjan Sundaram. He is a classically trained actor with an MFA from the Old Globe/University of San Diego program and has appeared on off-Broadway and regional stages, as well as in film and television. Neil currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife.
Simon Vance is a critically acclaimed narrator who has recorded over eight hundred audiobooks and has received over fifty Earphones Awards. A twelve-time Audie Award winner and frequent finalist, he has been named an AudioFile Golden Voice, an AudioFile Best Voice, and the first Booklist Voice of Choice. A former BBC Radio presenter and newsreader in London, he currently lives in California, where he also pursues stage and television acting.
