Luv it alote........ Review on In A Free State - V S Naipaul

In a country in Africa, there are two groups of people – the President’s men and the King’s men; and the third are the Europeans, the settlers, the colonialists, the government officers, trapped in the rising heat between them. A hunt is going on and Bobby and Linda are travelling from capital, where Africa is in absentia, to the troubled south, with the uprising, revenge and self-identification of natives in the backdrop of their conversation. There is change of tides, rusting of old establishments and adjustment of hierarchy. But the story is of a travel, of perception of two white people of the changes in their present home, of transition and not of the revolution.

This 1971 Booker Prize winning book, which was originally published with two supporting matter from other places, now absent, is, in abstract, a story of change, but not the physical change as much as the change of outlook, attitude and opinions. Compared to the Naipaul’s previous books, this book have a different tongue which is much closer to a travelogue than a work of fiction. With almost more than 70% of book dedicated to the description of the surrounding, of the road, nearly everything around the protagonist Bobby, it seems that Naipaul want its reader to clearly picture the Africa of that time and imagine the changing feelings which is the reason the book clearly belongs to the decade of 70s.