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 House Divided (novel) A House Divided (novel) A House Divided (1935) is the sequel to the 1932 novel "Sons", and the third book in "The House of Earth" trilogy, all written by Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck. It centers on the third generation of Wang Lung's family, focusing particularly on his grandson Wang Yuan. Shortly after the confrontation between Wang the Tiger and his son Wang Yuan at the end of "Sons", Yuan travels to the old earthen house where his grandfather Wang Lung had lived. He intends merely to hide here for a while and wait out the revolution in which