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About
Born in Trinidad of Indian descent, a resident of England for his entire adult life, and a prodigious traveler, V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of “fitting one civilization to another.” Here, he takes us into his sometimes inadvertent process of creative and intellectual assimilation, which has shaped both his writing and his life. In a probing narrative that is part meditation and part remembrance, Naiapul discusses the writers to whom he was exposed early on and his first encounters with literary culture. He looks at what we have retained and what we have forgotten of the classical world, and he illuminates the ways in which Indian writers such as Gandhi and Nehru both reveal and conceal themselves and their nation. Full of humor and privileged insight, this is an eloquent, intimate exploration into the configuration of a writer's mind.
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Reviews
"As ever, Naipauls sentences are tightly coiled and muscular; they embody the very qualities they praise…His characteristic excursions into the byways of history and autobiography are often revelatory, opening up new vistas…this is a brilliant work from a man who more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer."
Observer
"[A]n important coda, on a lifetime of seeing and, perhaps unwittingly, on the violence of doing so…Its most brilliant pages are its most idiosyncratic and individual ones, reminding us that one compelling way of looking usually suggests the possibility of another."
Amit Chaudhuri, The Guardian
"There are some amazingly lofty and chilling lines. But there are also explorations of his own woundedness, of his personal myth of origins, or lack of origins…Naipaul is at his best here when teasing out the ironies and complexities of cultural exchange in the persons of figures with whom he can identify."
Sunday Telegraph
Extended Details
- SeriesVintage International