Half a Life (novel) Half a Life (novel) Half a Life is a 2001 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul published by Alfred A. Knopf. The novel is set in India, Africa and Europe (London, Berlin and Portugal). "Half a Life" was long listed for the Man Booker prize (2001). Willie Somerset Chandran is the son of a Brahmin father and a Dalit mother. His father gave him his middle name as a homage to the English writer Somerset Maugham who had visited the father in the temple where the father was living under a vow of silence. Having come to despise his
A Class Divided A Class Divided A Class Divided is a 1985 episode of the PBS series "Frontline". Directed by William Peters, the episode profiles the Iowa schoolteacher Jane Elliott and her class of third graders, who took part in a class exercise about discrimination and prejudice in 1970 and reunited in the present day to recall the experience. In 1968, following the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jane Elliott tried discussing issues of discrimination, racism, and prejudice with her third grade class in Riceville, Iowa. Not feeling that the discussion was getting through to her class, who did not