Sparse, succinct.

Cosmopolitan Berlin.
Forests of India.
Colonial demise in Africa.
London’s new identity.

Magic Seeds begins in far distant Germany where the distraught and confused protagonist, Willie Chandran, is trying to come to terms with his identity. Chandran – a figure who I believe represents the 20th century Indian emigrant – has suffered from a broken marriage. He lives with his sister, a progressive, neo-liberal. On her urgings, Chandran takes up the cause of the lower caste in India. He decides to join the underground struggle. His journey to India and the initial contact with the underground is typical of a new acolyte; fervor, zeal and self-convincing monologue at every hurdle.

Like Kafka’s many stories, Naipaul’s Chandran keeps treading the path of failure or gloom. Naipal paints an unflattering picture of the ‘freedom struggle’ and he is careful not to name this struggle.

Despite the political overtures and the skepticism reserved for grass root guerilla movements, Naipaul insists that he is devoid of political leanings. Having grown up outside India, Naipaul says be belongs to the same class of ‘floating man’ that Willie Chandran belongs to.

The book is a very trying affair to read. If one is not acquainted with Naipaul and the India he describes, one is bound to give up reading by the fourth chapter. The long convoluted prose is a sure put off as much as the naïve character that Chandran evolves into. “The more I saw myself getting into a mess, the more I would have pressed on,” says Chandran in Magic Seeds and this succinct line evokes pity at first but plain irritation by the end of it.

Read the full review at The Sussegad Life

Probably the most appealing book I could find in a "Power Books" in Manila. I considered exchanging it after a while, but now I'm in for the long haul. Very simply written -- too simple sometimes -- but there's still profound insight in there. Revolutions aren't so cut and dry.

Disjointed, unfocused. I am not sure what I am supposed to get from this book, or what it was about. The protagonist wandered around, indecisive, lacking in character, buffered by the wind. Writing was sometimes beautiful, but ultimately I was a bit bored and confused.

4/13 of physical books on my shelves, will not keep.

قال ويلي " الأمر الوحيد الذي عملت عليه طوال حياتي ، ليس لأن أكون في دياري حيثما وجدت . ولكن لأبدو وكأنني في دياري
"
ويلي شاندران هو بالقطع شخصية من شخصيات العالم الثالث ، وإن كان قد إستطاع أن يٌضيع ذاته في رواية "نصف حياة " فهو هنا قد دمرها تماما . ينضم لحركة سرية لتحرير الطبقات الدنيا ثم يكتشف أن " تلك الحرب لم تكن حربي ولا حربك ولا علاقة لها بالقروين الذين إدعينا أننا نقاتل في سبيلهم " يسلم نفسه ويقضي في السجن بضع سنين ثم يعود للندن لتبتلعه العزلة و الإغتراب ليكتشف في النهاية أنه " يقضي في الحياة حكما مؤبدا بالسجن " إنه سجين رغبته في التحرر وعدم إستطاعته تحقيق تلك الرغبة .
هذه رواية حوارات مطولة. وللأسف ليس فيها من رواية نصف حياة غير أنها تكلمة لها . لكن عظمة هذه الرواية تتجلى ــ في رأيي ــ في قصة الأب وعلاقته بابنه . إن الأب ، والتي كانت سيرة حياته في النصف الأول من رواية نصف حياة قصة رائعة وفكهة ، عظيمة وأصلية . نجد أن وجوده هنا هو مجرد حدث جانبي يذكر في رسائل متبادلة بين الأخ وأخته . إنه يحتضر ويموت دونما أي إهتمام حقيقي من الإبن
.
ولذلك أشعر بالأسف لأنني أحببت والد ويلي شاندران أكثر مما أحببت أبي .

La storia mi è scivolata addosso senza lasciarmi granché, di semi magici non vi è l'essenza tranne che un accenno verso la fine riguardo a sciamani e pozioni. Ma ciò può essere dovuto alla mia carenza di partecipazione essendo passato da molto prima a leggere in modalità scazzata (solo perché sono bibliomasochista e i libri li voglio portare a termine comunque). La trama non saprei come riportarla, c'è sto Willie che passa, nell'ordine, attraverso una guerriglia in India, il carcere, il riscatto sociale per interposto avvocato che lo ospita a Londra, il contesto borghese, scopate e stage in architettura a cinquant'anni, per poi terminare su un prato a un ricevimento nuziale multietnico. Bah, avesse almeno aiutato la prosa, ma neanche quella (a mio gusto). Ripetitiva, estenuante, sbrodolante, monotonomonologante. E anche il traduttore ci mette lo zampino (le palme delle mani, il bangladese). Vabbé non infierisco oltre.

I couldn't have enjoyed this book more thoroughly. Naipaul seems to have pondered the events in Ghandi's life, as detailed in the leader's autobiography, and cooked them up into an alternative life. The characters are rich, the themes are interwoven nicely in the plot, and emotional notes are struck with the right balance of intensity and restraint.

Maybe it was the fact that this is a continuation of another book (which I didn't read), maybe it's the fact that I've been having problems on concentrating in reading, maybe it's the story that didn't get me (I felt that I needed more knowledge about India and Africa in order to fully understad this book) or maybe it's just me, but this book wasn't my cup of tea :(
Anyway, it was interesting to get to know a new author - maybe I just didn't choose the best book to get to know him.

Gorgeous language and tremendously transporting, yet still somehow this story of a peripatetic man in search of a cause and his own purpose in life did not engage me, partially because he himself seemed so disengaged. Mush of the novel is given over to the stories of others as told to the protagonist, which further the basic tenet of the book but do nothing to further engage the reader. I was also a little disturbed by the final sentences in which the "moral of the story" is spelled out as the protagonist's epiphany, just in case the reader didn't grasp it in the previous pages.

I loved the first half and was a little lost by the second half.

Certainly better than the novel that started the series, but yet again not interesting enough.

I chose this book because of the title, not realizing that it is a sequel to HALF I LIFE which I did not read. To be fair, I can't give this a just assessment. Suffice it to say, I couldn't get all the way through it. The idea of magic seeds is based on the magic of being able to produce a raceless society through miscegenation.

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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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.