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
Thermal and a Quarter Thermal and a Quarter (2000), Jupiter Café (2002), Plan B (2005), This Is It (2008), 3 Wheels 9 Lives (2012), The Scene (2015), and No Wall Too High (2015). Mani won Guitarist of the Year at the Jack Daniels Rock Awards in 2009 and 2012. In 2010, TAAQ opened a music school in Bangalore, called the "Taaqademy", with branches in Koramangala and Whitefield. The Whitefield branch was opened in 2014. Thermal and a Quarter Thermal and a Quarter (TAAQ) is a rock band from Bangalore, India, that describes its music as "Bangalore rock", rooted in a classic rock idiom while