Word: magic
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...fiction writer shriveled: his 1980s and '90s were dominated by journalism, with a few exceptions such as his semiautobiographical novel The Enigma of Arrival (1987). Then in 2001 came Half a Life?his first full-blooded novel in a long time. Now, at 72, Naipaul has written the sequel, Magic Seeds, which he said last week is likely to be his final book...
...Magic Seeds, Willie comes back to India, to join a movement of armed revolutionaries intent on ending the grip of feudal landlords on the countryside. But his real goal is not social revolution: time is running out for him to make a man of himself, and he figures he'll do it by fighting for a good cause. Almost as soon as he joins the guerrillas, he realizes he has made a mistake: he has fallen in among murderers and terrorists. In the chapters that follow, Naipaul sketches brilliant psychological portraits of the guerrillas?you understand that...
...when in his 20s, or Willie Chandran, whom he first dreamed up when in his 60s, Naipaul's fictional heroes are among the most complex in modern literature. Naipaul's strengths as a writer reach far beyond the concerns of the colonial and postcolonial. As Half a Life and Magic Seeds prove, his greatest gift is that he can unlock the closed cabinet of the male psyche and take out so much that is hidden inside: how it hits a man one evening that he has wasted his life, the way his sexual desire reawakens in middle age, the thrill...
...could happen here. Al-Qaeda was thought to be behind the bombing of three Egyptian tourist sites popular with Israelis. While the White House welcomed the historic image of Afghans holding their first--and miraculously nonviolent--democratic elections, charges of possible fraud marred the picture of liberty working its magic...
...rumpled Rosenthal is trying to work the same magic for the Democratic Party as a whole. He has $125 million at his disposal--including $10 million from billionaire George Soros--which is about seven times what the national Democratic Party spent getting out the vote in 2000. Rosenthal's America Coming Together is the largest of the new political-advocacy organizations known as 527s for the section of the tax code that created them. On Election Day, Rosenthal expects to have 45,000 paid workers on the streets rounding up every Democrat they can find to vote. The secret...