A Voice of Freedom for the Stranded:In a Free State

Abstract

Naipaul’s In a Free Stateis a sequence of five works--two short journal extracts (the “Prologue” and the “Epilogue”), two short stories and a novella-linked by a common theme. All are about individuals stranded in foreign countries and confronted by alien cultures. So, the novel is a treatise on post-colonial studies and cultural identity formation. All the protagonists in the novel areplaced in a supposedly “free” state but, ironically, they are trapped in the context of a free world having lost their cultural identities.