In a Free State

In a Free State is a novel by V. S. Naipaul, published in 1971 by Andre Deutsch, which won the Booker Prize that same year. It is built like a symphony: five interconnected narratives whose different movements converge on a shared theme. The author never states it outright, but the book is concerned with the price of freedom, and the three central scenarios are linked by implicit parallels.

The book opens with a prologue presented as a fragment of a travel diary. On a ferry from Greece to Egypt, the narrator observes exiles and passengers who are identified only by their nationality. He watches, without intervening, as a elderly tramp is humiliated by other travellers, an episode that returns at the close of the book.

The first story, "One out of Many", follows an Indian servant from Bombay who accompanies his employer on a diplomatic mission to Washington. With no real alternatives at home, he learns the hard way about the poor exchange rate of the rupee and the rigours of life abroad. He abandons his post for a job in a restaurant and lives in fear of being found and sent back, or deported for working illegally. His only way out is to marry a woman he had once seduced and then avoided out of shame.

The second, "Tell Me Who to Kill", portrays an extended South Asian family in the rural West Indies, where rivalry between cousins shapes their fates. One brother emigrates to England to study engineering, and the elder follows, taking on demeaning work to support him. When he discovers that his brother is not studying at all, and that his own restaurant has become a haunt of hooligans, his frustration ends in murder. The story closes with the narrator briefly released from prison to attend a wedding.

The third, which gives the book its title, is set in a newly independent state in the African Great Lakes region. Bobby, a homosexual civil servant, drives with Linda, the wife of a colleague, through a land where violence is growing and rumours circulate about the expulsion of the Asian community. The tension between the two, Bobby's history of mental illness, and a hotel run by an old colonel who refuses to accept the new order set the stage for a journey that turns into a nightmare, ending with Bobby brutally beaten at a military checkpoint.

The epilogue returns to Egypt, where the narrator witnesses a tourist throwing food to beggar children so he can watch them punished. Recalling the tramp from the ferry, the narrator takes a symbolic stand, but feels powerless in the face of the scene.

The book provoked controversy. Some judges questioned whether a collection of linked tales could count as a novel, and one of them withdrew from the panel. Critics praised the intensity of the prose and the portrait of racism and rootlessness, though some found the gay character caricatured. In 2011 Naipaul published the central narrative as a standalone novel under the same title.