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Magic Seeds (Vintage International) Kindle Edition

3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 49 ratings

The Nobel Prize-winning author continues the story of Willie Chandran, the perennially dissatisfied and self-destructively naive protagonist of his bestselling Half a Life.

“The most essential English-language novelist of our time.” —
New York

Having left a wife and a livelihood in Africa, Willie is persuaded to return to his native India to join an underground movement on behalf of its oppressed lower castes. Instead he finds himself in the company of dilettantes and psychopaths, relentlessly hunted by police and spurned by the people he means to liberate. But this is only one stop in a quest for authenticity that takes in all the fanaticism and folly of the postmodern era. Moving with dreamlike swiftness from guerrilla encampment to prison cell, from the squalor of rural India to the glut and moral desolation of 1980s London,
Magic Seeds is a novel of oracular power, dazzling in its economy and unblinking in its observations.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. At the end of Half a Life, Naipaul's previous novel, Willie, a young Indian in late 1950s London, travels to Africa. At the beginning of his new novel, Willie is in Berlin with his bossy sister, Sarojini. It is 18 years later. Revolution has uprooted Willie's African existence. Sarojini hooks him up with a guerrilla group in India, and Willie, always ready to be molded to some cause, returns to India. The guerrillas, Willie soon learns, are "absolute maniacs." But caught up, as ever, in the energy of others, Willie stays with them for seven years. He then surrenders and is tossed into the relative comfort of jail. When an old London friend (a lawyer named Roger) gets Willie's book of short stories republished, Willie's imprisonment becomes an embarrassment to the authorities. He is now seen as a forerunner of "postcolonial writing." He returns to London, where he alternates between making love to Perdita, Roger's wife, and looking for a job. One opens up on the staff of an architecture magazine funded by a rich banker (who is also cuckolding Roger). Willie's continual betweenness—a state that makes him, to the guerrillas, a man "who looks at home everywhere"—is the core theme of this novel, and the story is merely the shadow projected by that theme. Sometimes, especially toward the end of the book, as Willie's story becomes more suburban, there is a penumbral sketchiness to the incidents. At one point, Willie, remarking on the rich London set into which he has been flung, thinks: "These people here don't understand nullity." Naipaul does—he is a modern master of the multiple ironies of resentment, the claustrophobia of the margins. In a world in which terrorism continually haunts the headlines, Naipaul's work is indispensable.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine

Half A Life (2001) might have been better been left without this sequel, which ruffles reviewers’ feathers as only a grand old man of literature can. Though his trophy shelf holds a Nobel Prize, his past accomplishments buy him little sympathy. In fact, it’s often difficult to tell if critics are more put off by Magic Seeds or their appraisal of Willie Chandran as a mouthpiece for Naipaul’s politics. For an author whose greatest works have a heavy dose of autobiography, this reaction is not surprising, though it makes one wonder whether critics are reading the novel or dissecting the author. In the end, one hopes the unlikable characters, implausible plotting, and general fog of pessimism are what doom this book, not critical disappointment in Naipaul.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0037BS2MW
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (February 6, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 6, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2416 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 290 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 49 ratings

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V. S. Naipaul
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3.8 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2014
    GREAT
  • Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2007
    "Magic Seeds" is the third book by V.S. Naipaul that I have read. I like his style and his observations on human society. However, I always get the sense that we are seeing the world through the eyes of a non-participant. In "Magic Seeds" we pick up where we left off in "Half a Life" with our impartial observer Willie involved in a variety of activities. They are all part of a search for purpose that seems misguided because he is taking his directions from others. Very seldom does he seem to find his own way in life yet it is his observations as a detached, unemotional observer that makes "Magic Seeds" and "Half a Life" such compelling novels.

    I was rather puzzled by the experiences Willie had in India. I admit it was an unusual set of circumstances but that's where Willie's detachment became so frustrating. Why he didn't just walk away maybe says a lot about my naivite but it left me wondering how much I was willing to invest in such an otherwise keen insight. Despite what I said about Willie in India, I like the way Naipaul takes us to places we don't normally get to go. I'll be glad to read more of his books and maybe, somewhere along the way, I'll come across a character who actually cares about his life and surroundings. If not, I'll keep to my theory that Naipaul's greatness is his ability to let us see what life looks like when the world treats you as unimportant. For someone with an Asian heritage raised in the Carribean and educated in England, I DO understand that Naipaul knows of what he rights about.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 11, 2015
    Bit tedious and predictable. No likeable characters and generally depressive feel to the book. Though from time to time the genius of Naipul is evident especially writing about the last days of colonial Africa. Surely no one writes as well as Naipul on Africa. He pulls no punches. Incredible he has won any prizes in the politically correct pointless world of modern literature.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2006
    The title of "Half a Life" had a second meaning that became clear only after "Magic Seeds" was published. The latter isn't a sequel - it's the second half of the former.

    There are many wonderful things about the combination novel, beginning with the almost magically concise style Naipaul has mastered, or more properly has invented. There are ironies within ironies, as in the comic parallels between the personal and sexual disappointments that drive Indian guerillas into the woods and drive the character of Roger into a Tom Wolfe style of conservative cultural politics. Both attempts to channel sexual frustration into politics are equally ineffectual to change the world, or even to avert personal calamity. Neither is ultimately much more than an expression of bitterness toward a world that refuses to conform to the individual's idealized vision of it - for the magic seeds that refused to sprout.

    Throughout there are references to the way in which people pick up ideas of what they should be or say, and then try to act up to those ideas, or ideals - references that evidently go right over the heads of critics who insist on seeing the things the characters do and say as reflections of Naipaul, when they're not even true reflections of the characters themselves.

    There is great pleasure in reading these extraordinarily well-written books, and a still-deeper pleasure in thinking them through after you finish. They're masterpieces that people will be reading with admiration and even awe a hundred years from now.
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on April 28, 2005
    Magic Seeds is the sequel to V.S. Naipaul's powerful novel, Half a Life. If you have not yet read that book, I strongly urge you to do so before you read this one. Otherwise, you will feel like Scotty beamed you up into a seat of an airplane on its way somewhere without any warning.

    In Half a Life, Willie Chandran left his native India to pursue his education in England and found himself to be miserable there. With a little notoriety from his writing, he attracts the attention of a wealthy wife and moves to Africa where he lives an indolent life. In that book, Willie is established as someone too passive to seize on his own desires . . . and leads a shadow-like existence that doesn't please him.

    In Magic Seeds, Willie has left Africa and finds himself as a temporary visitor in Berlin with his radicalized sister who wants him to return to India as a guerrilla fighter. While there, he realizes that revolutionary warfare is often more about the power lust of the revolutionaries than any potential benefit to those who they are supposed to be liberating. The resulting story is a scathing indictment of leftist revolutionary movements. After many years in the field, Willie turns himself in and is imprisoned. There, he finds that escaping the revolutionaries is almost as hard as ever . . . and his life still suffers from being too passive in the face of the resolve of others.

    Unexpectedly released from prison, Willie returns to England and encounters the modern "civilized" world and finds it wanting as well. But Willie has started to grow up at last and begins to seize on initiative to get what he wants . . . and to learn from those who have been too greedy at following their impulses and ideologies. He even begins to see that there are times when being passive can be rewarding, and he begins to use passivity as a strategy to gain his ends. You also find out what happened to many of the characters who influence Willie in Half a Life.

    The book's main weakness is that Mr. Naipaul is obsessed with the idea that people shouldn't be so easily swayed by others into making life-changing decisions based on limited information and spurious logic. They are looking for magic seeds that will lead them up Jack's beanstalk to slay a giant and gather up a hen that lays golden eggs. That's a silly search. There are no magic seeds. That theme is repeated and developed from every possible angle. The message overweighs the story so that this becomes more like a philosophical novel rather than a story-telling novel.
    34 people found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent condition, quite prompt delivery
    Reviewed in Canada on August 4, 2021
    best condition of all the books ordered; most prompt delivery, too
  • Lomaharshana
    5.0 out of 5 stars Important novel to read for modern Indians
    Reviewed in India on May 1, 2021
    I got the hardcover edition for ₹1,395. It was sold by India Book Club. The book arrived in very good condition (which is a rarity on Amazon India). It is the 2004 edition published in the UK by Picador.

    Now about what's inside the book. “Magic Seeds” is Naipaul's last novel. It tells the second half of the story of an Indian man called Willie Chandran. (The first part was narrated by Naipaul in “Half a Life” in 2001.) Like an expert surgeon, Naipaul dissects Chandran’s mind as his life hurtles from Africa to India to England and lays it on a table for us to see. You will be astonished to see how accurately Naipaul understands what people think. If you are Indian, you will be even more amazed to see how accurately he understands how Indians think.

    Left-liberal Indians hate Naipaul for his accurate attack on the Nehruvian Left and his life-long support for a “confident” Hindutva. But in my opinion Naipaul has produced the only compelling criticism of modern India. As a changing society, India needs criticism to keep it on the straight and narrow. But criticising India is hard. But most right-wing Indians’ patriotism comes in the way of them assessing India accurately. And most left-wing Indians are too blind in their hatred of India and their bigotry to produce a constructive criticism. Naipaul is neither. That is why his criticism becomes realistic and important.

    For example, Bengali youth will find Naipaul's criticism of Naxalite communists sobering. In his confusion, Chandran goes to fight with the Naxalites in the forests. After a hard-wrenching event there, he concludes, ”I am among absolute maniacs.” Chandran’s subsequent emigration to the UK is occasion for Naipaul to show what modern Indians really want and what they have denied themselves in their homeland thanks to leftist populism. Typically for Naipaul, the list includes Chandran’s distaste for “cardboard boxes tied by string” that Indian passengers carry on the flight, and his admiration for the kitchen hobs and wallpaper in his UK home.

    The book ends in Chandran discovering wisdom. Very appropriate ending for the last novel by Naipaul, who once said that he being Indian is his religion.
  • MG
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 12, 2015
    A great read.
  • recluse
    4.0 out of 5 stars どこに主人公は向かうのか?
    Reviewed in Japan on December 17, 2005
    この作品は、half a lifeの続編です。前作は、主人公が崩壊直前のアフリカの旧植民地からベルリンに脱出した時点で終わっていましたが、この続編では、主人公が次なる運命を求めて彷徨しながら、自分のこれまでの軌跡を振り返る姿が赤裸々に描写されます。英語自体はわかりやすいのですが、ある程度のインド並びに英国(council estateの持つ象徴的な意味合いがわかる日本人なんているわけないだろ)についての基本的な常識を必要とする点では難解な作品なのかもしれません。相変わらず取り上げられている題材は、すべて日本人には、理解しがたい歴史の業です。本作では、主人公が参加するインドでのゲリラ運動とその中での無意味な党派的な対立、そして主人公がその後にたどり着く、労働党政権の諸政策の跡が皮肉的な形で(unintended consequences)色濃く残る1980年代後半の英国です。主人公自身も50歳の声を聞くようになりますが、さまざまな価値観が交錯し混乱する1980年代後半の英国の中で、依然として自分の進むべき方向を喪失したままです。しかし、主人公が指摘する、人種の差異の解消を世代を超えて目指したある黒人の一生の軌跡は、naipaulが現在の時点でたどり着いたひとつの結論なのかもしれません。となれば、その意味は深いながらも悲劇的なものです。そして、この作品はnaipaulの初期の作品の再読を促がすものかもしれません。
  • Gurpal Singh
    2.0 out of 5 stars Wate of time
    Reviewed in India on March 28, 2023
    The books goes to great lengths, quite literally to nowhere.

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