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    Magic Seeds
    Magic Seeds
    Magic Seeds
    Audiobook9 hours

    Magic Seeds

    Written by V. S. Naipaul

    Narrated by Aasif Mandvi

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul's magnificent Magic Seeds continues the story of Willie Chandran, the perennially dissatisfied and self-destructively naive protagonist of his bestselling Half a Life. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 6, 2008
    ISBN9781449803537
    Magic Seeds
    Author

    V. S. Naipaul

    V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.

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    Reviews for Magic Seeds

    3/5

    70 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I just love the man's prose. Doesn't seem to matter whether I care for the story opr not - I simply love reading his words.
    • 1/5
      Please note this review will have spoilers.After leaving behind his wife and his life in Africa, Willie spends time in Berlin with his political sister, who encourages him to return to their homeland of India and join with some revolutionaries there. Unwittingly, Wilie gets involved with a violent faction of the movement, spending years with these radicalized folks before being rescued back to England where he began his career as a young man.I don't even know where to being with this book. Apparently it's a follow-up to a previous book by Naipaul, which I did not know until just moments ago. That fact may help with one irritation I found with the book, which was that Willie keeps referencing his past life in England and especially Africa but what exactly happened there is never fully explained. Now I guess I have the answer in that Naipaul assumes you've read the previous book and know that past. That, however, is not my biggest issue with this book. Honestly, it was just kind of dull and meaningless. In many respects, this book reminds me of Sinclair Lewis's Main Street -- possibly an unlikely connection, but I felt like the two main characters were very similar in that they drift from experience to experience looking for some great meaning in life and never finding it. Willie has no real ambitions and direction in life; he moves back to India and joins a political group because his sister (with whom he does seem to have a bizarre relationship) suggests it, and she herself seems to be influenced by her German boyfriend. Even after he realizes how radical they are, Wilie doesn't leave the group he's joined because of ... inertia? No matter where Wilie is, he is unhappy. In jail, he can't stand being with the political prisoners; when he's moved with the general population, he can't stand it; when he goes to the prison hospital, he's miserable; when he gets a lifeline to get out of jail free, then he's upset than he can't leave England again after this. After years in a guerrilla group and years in prison, Willie literally says he has no takeaway from his time in India. He killed a man in India, yet he says nothing he did there mattered.Once in England, Willie's life is flowing with the tide again, following around whatever his lawyer/friend Roger tells him to do. Willie just lives in Roger's house in the beginning, drifting away his time looking for things to fill the hours, including sleeping with Roger's wife because, hey, why not. In fact, it seems like everyone in Willie's circle is sleeping with someone other than their spouse, but yet the younger generation who have children before getting married are the only ones who are criticized. Most of this section of the book deals with Roger's pretentious thoughts on class and what he perceives as problems. We hear on multiple occasions about how these horrible single mothers are gaming the system by asking for government assistance. Seriously, Willie murdering a man in cold blood is mentioned for about two sentences, but there are two or three long rants about women receiving welfare for their children. If Naipaul is trying to make a point here, I just don't get what it is.The only redeeming thing about this book was that the audio version was narrated by Aasif Mandvi, who was excellent at negotiating all the accents and emotions that accompany this story.
    • 2/5
      Firstly I feel that it is only fair to admit that I read this book not realising that it is the sequal to another,'Half a Life', which I've not read so that will almost certainly have a bearing on my opinion of this book.The story, such as it is, revolves around Willie Chadran, an Indian who grew up in India, went to university in London before moving to Africa and marrying a Portuguese woman. After 18 years of marriage he leaves his wife and move to Berlin and his sister, whom he has had little contact with for 20 years. In Berlin he finds his sister has been radicalised into being a supporter of some Indian revolutionaries. She cajoles Willie into returing to India, a country he has not visited since his childhood and does not understand to join the rebelion. Willie soon becomes disallusioned with the rebels but is too fearful and complacent to leave them. Eventually he is captured, imprisoned and eventually released and returned to London. The magic seeds of the title refer to the crazy notion of climbing a giant beanstalk and there slaying a giant.That all said I'm afraid that I wasn't overly impressed this book. On the whole I rather liked Naipaul's writing style and that the story, such as it is, is many layered however after a while the frequent repetitions became somewhat grating. However, my main problems was with the chracters.In particular the fact that I just could not relate or empathise with any of them. Willie himself just seems to drift from one situation to the next like a feather on the wind and then does nothing but moan about where he has landed rather than actually trying to make a life for himself. Mainly I felt that they all became merely vehicles for Naipaul's own prejudices. The predominant ones being power and class. Now I rather enjoyed his critique of revolutionaries and how they are more interested in personal power than they are in the needs and interests of the people that they are supposedly fighting for, not just in India but all over the world. However, once Willi returned to London and the 'civilized' world the story then centres predominantly on his friend and benefactor Roger and Roger's wife Perdita and their marriage problems. This, although comical at times, became too banal for my taste. In the end I felt that all the characters were merely whingers and as such annoying.I did reach the end of the book so it can't be all bad but if you do want to read this book make sure that you read the prequal first.
    • 2/5
      This is one strange book. There are little pockets, glimpses of really interesting writing and ideas, but it's all dressed up in such a strange package. Too weighted down in reality to be a fable, yet too unrealistic to be taken seriously, the main character just flips through life echoing everything around him in his banal thoughts and despite all the horrible things he ends up involved in, I could never feel sorry for him or many of the people around him. Now I think about it, it almost feels like this book is trying to be too much of everything without committing itself to one path. Is it lush or is it minimalist? Is it a book about this man Willie's incredible/incredulous journey across the globe from controlling influence to controlling influence, or is it a discussion on humanity, class, power and culture? Although competent at all of these things, somehow, it just doesn't seem to satisfy.
    • 2/5
      If I find myself in the unfortunate situation of struggling with a book, I typically reassess my willingness to pursue its completion around page 50 or so. Since Magic Seeds was my first novel by Naipaul, it was an assigned book in the Go Review that Book! group, and also because I own it, I felt more of an obligation to finish it. Alas, I closed it at page 149 of 288. I was simply too bored with it and found myself procrastinating with the book as other things were "more important". For reading, that was a new experience...*****POSSIBLE SPOILERS*****Magic Seeds is the story of Willie, a middle-aged (late-30s, early 40s) man who is discovering himself in his native India as the newly confirmed member of a rebel sect. While this may sound exciting, Naipaul is intentionally vague (I suppose because that's the nature of a rebel sect - to be unidentified) and as a result you don't get enough details about Willie, his mates, their mission, the surroundings, or anything else, to grip onto.Willie goes back and forth trying to decide if he's doing the right thing, with the right group, or wants to remain. He's indecisive and the group continues to weaken further lessening the appeal of the book. If Willie can't commit to the group, how can we as readers?More disappointingly, I found the writing pedestrian. I've heard many things about Naipaul's prose and that was why I bought the book (when it was first released). I also own A Turn in the South since I live in the south. I had high hopes but was not impressed.No worries. I can now tick Naipaul off the list (and leave him there). It's happened before and will no doubt happen again. I'll dust off a different book and dive right in.