V. S. Naipaul’s In a Free State: Contours of Exile and the Paradox of Freedom

Abstract

V. S. Naipaul’s In a Free State comprises a prologue, three central narratives, and an epilogue, forming a distinctive sequence that explores the emotional and psychological costs of migration, political decolonization, and cultural uprooting. Across several locations—Greece and Egypt, the United States, Britain, and an unnamed African nation—Naipaul shows how exile and alienation shape the lives of servants, migrants, tourists, and expatriates. These figures move in search of safety, dignity, and opportunity, yet they usually end up in a state of suspension, uncertainty, and inner conflict rather than in genuine belonging. This paper explores the “contours of exile” in the book—the psychological, spatial, and symbolic boundaries within which Naipaul’s characters are forced to live—and examines the paradox of freedom that emerges from the text: political independence and personal mobility appear to promise liberation, but they regularly produce new forms of insecurity, violence, and self‑division instead. Building on Dr. Seerat Munir’s reading of exile and alienation in the work, and drawing on postcolonial critics such as Gillian Dooley and Timothy Weiss, the paper also considers Naipaul’s use of the mirror image, the motif of journeys, and intertextual links with Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking‑Glass to show how the identities of postcolonial subjects remain unstable even when they live “in a free state.”