Date Published:

Abstract:

Naipaul’s final two novels, Half a Life and Magic Seeds, revisit the question of what it means to lead a valuable life with a greater patience than he previously displayed for the possibilities of worthwhile belonging. This essay offers a different way through which the complexity and irresolution of these under-discussed novels might be approached by placing them in dialogue with the philosophical discussion of modern identity. Building upon the work of Charles Taylor and Kwame Anthony Appiah, among others, I argue that Naipaul’s late fiction reconsiders belonging and withdrawal as constituting a problematics of value. His late fiction takes seriously the difficulties of leading a life in relation to conflicting value systems, difficulties which are often overlooked in his own earlier writing and thinking.

October 2025: Leo Kadokura is a PhD candidate and modern literature tutor at the University of Oxford. His project examines the reciprocal relationship between literary innovation and changing constructions of English national identity across the 20^th century. He teaches 20^th-century English literature with an emphasis upon global and postcolonial approaches.