India

Much has changed since V.S. Naipaul's first trip to India and this fascinating account of his return journey focuses on India's development since independence. Taking an anti-clockwise journey around the metropolises of India - including Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, and Delhi - Naipaul offers a kaleidoscopic, layered travelogue, encompassing a wide collage of religions, castes, and classes at a time when the percolating ideas of freedom threatened to shake loose the old ways. The brilliance of the book lies in Naipaul's decision to approach this shifting, changing land from a variety of perspectives: the author humbly recedes and allows the Indians to tell the stories of their own lives. V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He is the author of many works of fiction including, "A House for Mr Biswas", "A Bend in the River" and "The Mystic Masseur", and 10 of non-fiction including "An Area of Darkness" and "India: A Wounded Civilization". He has won the Booker Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the WH Smith award and in 1993 was awarded the first David Cohen British Literature Award. "Half A Life", was published in September 2001. Shortly afterwards he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Wiltshire.