A Writers People, V. S. Naipaul
A Writers People, V. S. Naipaul
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A Writers People
Ways of Looking and Feeling

Author: V. S. Naipaul

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 5 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/29/2008

Synopsis

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 writers mind.

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rajat

Insightful, but a little too disjointed and self-indulgent, not to mention grumpy. Naipaul's famous scorn for other writers' work is on full display here, to the extent that one performs a double take upon seeing a stray word of praise [he heartily approves of Madame Bovary though, thankfully, but t......more

Goodreads review by Omar Ali

Naipaul is famously ungenerous and harsh, but he is also always worth reading. I have never read Anthony Powell, so I cannot say if his comments about Tony are unfair or not, but his insights about Gandhi and Nirad Choudhry (and "that fool, Vinoba Bhave") are pure gold. And you will learn more about......more

Goodreads review by Tanuj

The minor danger is that Naipaul, the Exile exemplar, might be himself turning into an 'over-written-about' country. Otherwise, he does here serious harm to Anthony Powell's life-work, calls A Passage to India w/o meaning, destroys Flaubért's Salammbô, and educates about the making of Mahatma Gandhi......more

Goodreads review by Sunil

Usually I manage to resist reading a review before I read any book. But, when it is reviewed as the main article at the London Review of Books, it becomes incredibly hard to ignore. And impossible, either due to the reaction to it or because of my admiration for the writer, if it is a Naipaul book.......more

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