Like all of V. S. Naipaul??s ??travel?? books, The Masque of Africa encompasses a much larger narrative and purpose: to judge the effects of belief (in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders and mythical history) upon the progress of civilization. From V. S. Naipaul: For my travel books […]
One of the finest living writers in the English language, V. S. Naipaul gives us a tale as wholly unexpected as it is affecting, his first novel since the exultantly acclaimedA Way in the World, published seven years ago. Half a Lifeis the story of Willie Chandran, whose father, heeding the call of Mahatma Gandhi, […]
Revisiting Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia – the countries he visited for Among the Believers (1981), Naipaul reviews his impressions of the Islamic world. He explores the life and culture, and the current ferment which exists inside the nations of Islam.
In 1964 V.S. Naipaul published “An Area of Darkness”, his semi-autobiographical account of a year in India. Two visits later, prompted by the Emergency of 1975, he came to write “India: A Wounded Civilization”, in which he casts a more analytical eye over Indian attitudes. In this work, he recapitulates and further investigates the feelings […]
This book provides a critical evaluation of the successes and failures of Indian government at many levels. Jayanta Kumar Ray argues that India cannot claim to have reached the attainable level of good performance. The government of India has failed to adopt or implement policies conducive to such optimum use of available human and material […]
In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. […]
In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul, “one of literatures great travelers” (Los Angles Times), spans continents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiography and a fictional archaeology of colonialism. “Dickensian . . . a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipauls) life and work.”–New York Times.