The latest novel by the 2001 Nobel Prize winner, the English writer V. S. Naipaul (b. 1932), is being compared by critics to Voltaire’s “Candide.” From provincial India, fate takes Willie Chandran to the imperial center - London, and then again to the provinces, but this time in Africa. Different continents, different ways of life, different civilizations - and a once-only attempt to live your own, unique and real life. Will it be complete, successful, successful? And is everything good in this “best of all worlds”? Talking about ordinary people in ordinary everyday situations, the writer, together with his hero, is looking for an answer to the question that sooner or later everyone faces: “Am I living my own life?” In 2001, the novel “Half-Life” was longlisted for the Booker Prize .