Half a Life (novel) German and moves to Berlin. The novel ends with Willie having moved to his sister's place in Berlin after his 18-year stay in Africa. Having discovered that he's been living other people's lives and mimicking their behaviours to hide his past, it is implied at the end that he drops the mask and comes to peace with his background. "Half a Life" is a prequel to Naipaul's 2004 novel "Magic Seeds" which starts with Willie in Berlin. Half a Life (novel) Half a Life is a 2001 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul published by Alfred A. Knopf. The
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing In a "New York Times" review, Joshua Cohen described the book as being "in all respects, a heresy — which is to say, Lord above, it’s a future classic." Reviewing the novel for "The Guardian", Anne Enright wrote that it "is hard to read for the best reasons: everything about it is intense and difficult and hard-won." The novel won several awards including the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The Guardian Book Club featured the novel in 2016, and