A Way in the World, V. S. Naipaul
A Way in the World, V. S. Naipaul
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A Way in the World
A Novel

Author: V. S. Naipaul

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 11 hr 41 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/04/2018

Synopsis

In a vastly innovative novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul intertwines memory and history to create what is at once an autobiography and an ambitious fictional archaeology of colonialism.Spanning continents and centuries and defying literary categories, A Way in the World tells intersecting stories whose protagonists include the disgraced and half-demented Sir Walter Raleigh who seeks El Dorado in the New World; the nineteenth-century insurgent Francisco Miranda, who becomes entangled in his own fantasies and borrowed ideas; and the doomed Blair, a present-day Caribbean revolutionary stranded in East Africa. Among these presences is a narrator who bears a telling resemblance to Naipaul himself: a Trinidadian writer of Indian ancestry and English residence boldly trying to come to terms with the mystery and transience that is his inheritance.

About V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) was the author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. His honors include the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize, the Trinity Cross, and a knighthood for services to literature. He was named a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 and went to Oxford on a scholarship in 1950.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Reviews

Goodreads review by William2

I have said in my comments on this site that I think that the millenarian tendencies of some of my more, shall we say, zealous Christian forebears, might have made me keenly receptive to dystopic narratives, among other grim eschatological works. We know there are talents as well as resemblances, no......more

Goodreads review by Bob

tales of the wayfarers V.S. Naipaul has produced any number of interesting or even great books. They include novels of Trinidad, his home country and travel books about India, Africa and the Islamic world. I liked the Trinidad novels for their humor and wonderful insights they provided the foreign re......more

Goodreads review by Manick

I am a huge admirer of VS Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival and A House for Mr Biswas are two of the best novels ever written in the 20th Century. However, I found this one to be quite a slog and a challenge. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind when reading it, perhaps it's not a bedtime book. Ea......more

Quotes

“Dickensian…A brilliant new prism through which to view [Naipaul’s] life and work.” New York Times

“A bewitching piece of work by a mind at the peak of its abilities.” New York Times Book Review

“Memorably narrated by Simon Vance. Vance is the very expression of the voice we hear when we read Naipaul: measured, judicious, worldly-wise…Vance’s balanced, expertly paced delivery conveys as well the passion and conviction that underlie Naipaul’s marvelous prose.” AudioFile

“Naipaul’s mastery of his material is absolute, and his seemingly effortless, beautifully wrought prose carries the reader to the heart of the mysteries of human destiny.” Publishers Weekly

“Explore[s] the sources and implications of his feelings of rootlessness, the realities of the colonial experience, the impact of cultural displacement, and our need to belong…A work from a fine and thoughtful storyteller.” Library Journal

“Naipaul more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer.” Observer (London), praise for the author

“It is Naipaul’s uncanny ability to…uncover the raw wood beneath the highly polished veneers, that places his writing among the best in the English-speaking world.” Winnipeg Free Press, praise for the author

“For more than fifty years, V. S. Naipaul has been an important voice with his keen, often painfully blunt insights into modern cultures and societies…He has traveled and observed, producing a wealth of fiction and nonfiction about modern life that is as thought-provoking as it is engaging.” Edmonton Journal, praise for the author

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