Jan 16, 2016 09:24 AM
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In keeping with Naipaul's schizophrenic relationship with colonialism, he is at his condescending best in this only Booker-winning work of his. The original novel was a loosely-bunched-together collection of three short stories, but the edition I read contained just one, the main story at the end of the original book.
It is essentially a road-story. The protagonist Bobby, who is an official getting back to his living quarters in the Government compound from a conference that he attended in the capital, is accompanied by a colleague's wife, Linda, on the journey.
In the mad power-struggle that follows in the aftermath of granting of independence to the fictional Great Lakes nation in Africa, violence runs deep. The overarching theme seems to be that of a people not ready to take their affairs into their own hands. It's very well-known how Naipaul has repeatedly derided Africa as a somehow sub-human culture still not prepared from civilization. This stance of his has been widely criticized, but what cannot be denied is that In A Free State is surprisingly prescient, as his most of his work.
An important theme is also that of distrust: the distrust of the servant, the distrust of the master, the distrust between Bobby and Linda, and a very basic distrust of the enterprise of freedom.
