Presenting a moving tale of a man searching for his life and fearing he has wasted it, this novel is also a testing study of the conflicts between the rich and the poor, and the struggles within each.
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Presenting a moving tale of a man searching for his life and fearing he has wasted it, this novel is also a testing study of the conflicts between the rich and the poor, and the struggles within each.
Read Less
Add this copy of Magic Seeds to cart. $11.94, good condition, Sold by GreatBookPricesUK5 rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Castle Donington, DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2005 by Vintage.
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Good. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 288 p. Vintage International. May show signs of wear, highlighting, writing, and previous use. This item may be a former library book with typical markings. No guarantee on products that contain supplements Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Twenty-five year bookseller with shipments to over fifty million happy customers.
Add this copy of Magic Seeds to cart. $19.70, like new condition, Sold by GreatBookPricesUK5 rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Castle Donington, DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2005 by Vintage.
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Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 288 p. Vintage International. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Add this copy of Magic Seeds to cart. $19.91, new condition, Sold by GreatBookPricesUK5 rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Castle Donington, DERBYSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2005 by Vintage.
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New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 288 p. Vintage International. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
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V.S. Naipaul's "Magic Seeds" (2004) is a philosophical novel exploring issues of personal identity and meaning in individual and political contexts. The book fails for many reasons, chiefly because its preachy, didactic tone takes away from any kind of story or character development. The characters are wooden and the plot implausible. There is value in what Naipaul has to say, but this novel is not a good medium.
The story is about Willie Chandran, a man in his early 40's when the book begins. In mid-life, Willie is an unconvincing subject for a coming of age story. The book takes the reader from Berlin where Willie is leading an idle life in the company of his sister, to India, where Willie spends seven years with a group of guerilla revolutionaries and is imprisoned, and, in a twist, back to England where Willie had gone to college and written a book of stories. The book is a sequel to Naipaul's novel "Half a Life" which tells of Willie's life up to the age of forty. Although "Magic Seeds" is written to be read independently, I thought it presupposed a great deal of Willie's experiences in the earlier book. I have not read "Half a Life" and found this sequel confusing without going back and reading reviews and summaries of the earlier work.
Willie was born in India to a man who gave up a professional career to found an ashram and his lower caste wife. Willie becomes a rootless, divided individual who lacks purpose in life and what is called an identity. This is apparently the premise of the earlier book and it carries through in "Magic Seeds". Willie lacks a sense of what he wants to do in life and becomes prey to all sorts of causes with minimum provocation. Thus, in the heart of this book, he joins a revolutionary movement aimed to free Indian's poor farmers from exploitation. The book explores his motivations and that of his confreres. Naipaul shows just and broad-based skepticism about these and other forms of revolutionary social movements.
The portion of the book that takes place in India is the part of the novel that is most nearly successful but is marred by its preaching. The last third of the book, which deals with Willie's renewed life in Britain after release from prison is nearly intolerable in the disjointedness of the writing, its harsh tone, and its didactic character. I felt I was being beaten over the head with Willie's lack of identity and the importance of being oneself. The focus in the final pages of the book shifts from Willie to the sexual past of one of his friends. It seems to me out of place with the rest of the book.
Themes of identity and activism are pervasive in modern literature, whether from the third world or from the United States or Britain. This book does not explore these issues well because the polemic is not well merged with the form of the novel. For what it says, the book in my view is top heavy with questions of identity. I read this book in a book group and in reading and thinking about it, thought of two other books our group has read out of many that explore issues of identity. First, I was reminded of Saul Bellow, another Nobel Prize winner, and the novel "Ravelstein" written in his old age. The main character of "Ravelstein" stresses the opportunity to study and learn for those fortunate to have the opportunity to do so, to avoid being imprisoned by the narrow concepts of identity, religious or social, in which they were born and to find a thoughtful life for themselves. Second, our group recently read "Butcher's Crossing" by the American National Book Award winning writer John Williams, the author of "Stoner". This Western novels tells the story of a young Harvard student who, under the influence of Emerson, travels West to find his identity in nature. Williams tells a dark, and cohesive story about youthful quests such as this in search of the "unalterable self". Both Bellow's novel and William's novel explore questions of identity but integrate these questions well with the form of the novel. I found them both literarily and philosophically more effective than Naipaul's "Magic Seeds."
