This is a charming novel. And this is his first work, to boot. A literary debut like this has got to make a few would-be writers wince. At least it's hard for me to imagine how writers could paint characters with even less brushstrokes than Naipaul and still succeed in making them so warm and lively.

The magic of this novel is that, even though the setting is in remotely foreign Trinidad-Tobago, it will still secure any reader's attention from the very first page, the idiosyncratic conjugation of the verbs 'to be' and 'to have' in the native patois notwithstanding. What helps is the abundant humor largely of two types: one where you laugh along with the characters in the sheer fortuitous turn of events, the other where you smile at their forgivably human foibles and the narrator's wry observations.

The plot itself is humorous. A bookish student named Ganesh Ramsumair is wedded to the plucky Leela through the machination of a crafty penny-pincher named Ramlogan. Having found out prior to the wedding that Ramlogan is charging him for his relatives' food without his consent, Ganesh proceeds to swindle his father-in-law, during an elaborate Hindu marriage ritual - details of which are hard to explain. Having realized that he must now make a living, he tries a few odd jobs, before he hits by luck on the one profession that his island needed most: a mystic. A mystic? Even Ganesh himself is half-incredulous, but sooner or later people flock from all over the country, wanting his help in driving some demon out of someone or other. From there on, his fortune never wanes. The final metamorphosis converts Ganesh into a democratic politician (hah!), a destiny that culminates in his transformation into the thoroughly anglicized "G. Ramsay Muir OBE".

What supports this edifice is a wonderful cast of characters, quasi-cartoonish in their presentation, but still very human. To take an example, the Great Belcher is thus named because of her unfortunate habit of eructation. But she redeems herself to the reader through a string of remarkably level-headed advice. Ramlogan is almost a cardboard cut-out villain, but his fluctuation from resentment to respect for Ganesh is so transparently tied to his greed that it's almost understandable.

The exchanges between the characters are also wonderful. One morning Ganesh decides that he and his neighbor should speak grammatically correct English. Neither Ganesh nor Suruj Poopa, his accomplice in literary endeavors, can suppress a smile at their ridiculously polite English. When his wife Leela chides him at night for forfeiting his resolution so quickly, the terse response is that she "cook food good". The stuff is classic.

But the irony of it is that he will end up speaking impeccably correct English and irony is where this novel truly shines. The matter-of-factly narration (peppered with a few general observations) remains fairly detached from his subject, the end result being innocent pokes and wry fun. The sign at his house welcomes the customer with suitably mystic overtones in Hindi, but in English the message is harshly business-like. His "election" is hardly democratic, and very corrupt. His abrupt transformation from a leftish politician to a right one comes not from conviction but from petty affront.

In the end, it would be endless to point out this novel's charms and witty sides. Anyone looking for a fun book should find it for themselves. I can't see how any reader could go wrong with this provided they are not looking for serious profundity. But you can't be reading Dostoevsky all the time. So take a breather.

This was Naipaul's first published book (and the third he'd written). It's a hilarious narrative about life in Trinidad, during WWII. Ganesh has finished his BA in the college at Port of Spain, when he is called home to his father's funeral. Once home, he marries the daughter of a friend of his father's. Ganesh needs a profession. He tries running a small "institute," writing, traditional Hindu massage ... he succeeds at nothing, until his aunt, "The Great Belcher," introduces him to mysticism. As the Mystic Masseur, he becomes known throughout Trinidad. Eventually he is pulled toward politics, and thus closer to the British colonial culture that will clash with his Hindu values and eventually absorb him.

"The Mystic Masseur" has unforgettable characters: the-father-in-law, Ramlogan; Beharry, the "nibbler," whose wife, Suruj Mooma, never passes up an opportunity to remind us that she "read to the Third Standard."

Later in his career, Naipaul tackled the subject of colonial schizophrenia with much more somber work: books like "Bend in the River" and "A Way in the World" touch on many of the same themes as this one, but not with the priceless humor.

One of Naipaul's early works. Intensely funny but the characters shine through all the humor. Books is a delight to read and Naipaul's English rests easy on the eye. Nothing really happens in the story and VS hints at some message but we dont really get it. But it is an insightful and multi-dimensionally nuanced portait of East Indian culture in the West Indies. A culture that seems to still retain a lot of India while at the same time rapidly acquiring other influences.

This is a truly moving and brilliant book about a man who discovers the creative impulse late in life. Unlike Naipaul's customery set of third-world characters, this one is an Englishman, which sets this book apart. We witness a novelist with great imaginative power, a first-rate talent.

Stone discovers he can create, with all its joys, its trials, and disappointments. He also finds love of a sort, which he struggles to pursue and maintain.

Warmly recommended.

Many of V.S.Naipaul's books are set in his native Trinidad, or other Caribbean islands, or locales such as Africa. This novel, however, is entirely set in England and all the characters are English. Richard Stone, a sixty-two year old bachelor is a librarian in a corporation who is approaching retirement. Unnerved at the prospect, he suddenly decides to marry. He also draws up a plan whereby his company can help its retired employees who are now pensioners, many living in penury. The plan, against all odds, becomes a success but Naipaul shows how victories can be bittersweet. A charming book, and a real treat to read even just for the style and the use of language.

This is one of Naipaul's earlier novels and in it he addresses many of the same themes that occupy his latter, and masterful "A Place in the World". These include the transition of a multi-ethnic Caribbean society from colony to independence; the culture-shock of a colonial exposed to higher education in Europe; post-independence power struggles and, ultimately, failure, corruption and slow descent into near chaos arising from lack of any dynamic other than lust for power and wealth. The cultural impoverishment of Asian communities cut off from their cultural roots are poignantly described here, as in much of Naipauls's other work (including the masterful "A House for Mr.Biswas", where the treatment is tragic-comic). As always Naipaul's evocation of place and character is acute, bleak and wholly convincing. This said however, the major criticism may be less one of the book than of this particular reader. There is only so much reality that can be comfortably absorbed in a single novel. The fact that the first-person narrator, unsparing in his confessions of mean-mindedness, lechery, callousness and greed, is so contemptible a human-being makes it very hard for the reader not to feel soiled by the time the whole sordid tale is done. I first read this book fourteen years ago, and retained a very unpleasant memory of it for this reason. On re-reading I found that my earlier perception was sustained. It is a splendid literary achievement - but a very distasteful one.

Nobel-prize winning Naipaul has written in The Mimic Men a wonderful discourse on the post-colonial search for indentity. Growing up between two worlds, those of the colonizer and of the colonized, the main character struggles to develop a cohsive self as a child, attempting to reconcile western values and beliefs with his traditional Hindu background.

The trials of the character continue through adulthood as he returns to his native Caribbean island with a new English wife, earns a status as one of the island's elite, and attempts to become one with his past as helps incite rebellion on the island against colonial forces.

The prose is beautiful, and Naipaul's power of observation and description are astounding. He truly gets to the heart of the post-colonial condition is this novel, one which will surely become a stable of post-colonial literature studies. Recommended highly to all.

This is an extremely melancholy story of a former minister of a small caribbean country, who ruminates in dingy exile on his life. As he stumbles through life, an intelligent and competent man but out of his depth, the characer is so painfully real that I had to distance myself from it at times. One of the great original voices, Naipaul has a genius for serving up exotic characters and helping us to empathise with them. It is illmninating and a good way to understand the Third World, even if Naipal is a bit too pessimistic; his peccadillos, almost whiny, form a large part of his novels.

This book claims to be a novel. I don't know that it is; it is more like an autobiographical essay, filled with character studies that imply more about the author than anything else. Raleigh and Miranda came to South America to conquer, and to find glory. But in Naipaul's fictional rendering, they've come to find themselves, and a certain tenderness, sentimentality, and openness pervades every word they speak. - I suspect Naipaul himself would be both pleased and angry at this development. You can clearly see his own voice, moral reckonings and conscience in their words, but it is said voice that makes these characters alive. Naipaul, in reading about Miranda and Raleigh, had to put himself in their shoes to understand who they were and their motivations truly, and in the process he found himself in their characters. -

There are other, loosely connected stories in this "novel," too. One about a Muslim who dresses up corpses before funerals; one about working in Trinidad's equivalent of the civil service; another about the development of a young novelist; yet another about the mediocrity of an immensely talented, mature novelist, and the simultaneous absurdity and purity of a black revolutionary. - All of these are, of course, connected by an autobiographical thread. -

But despite the existence of this thread, one would make a major mistake if one asked questions like "What is the narrator's persona?" or "How does the narrator change throughout the story(ies)?" - You are, after all, looking through someone else's eyes at the world. That constant looking submerges the self; makes it a mere reporter many times. -

I don't know how realistic that is (even in selflessness, the self quite literally exists). But it is part of this "novel," and it is beautiful to behold.

It has been said (mostly by me) that the achievement of Kingsley Amis and Philip Larking was that they turned self-pity and whingeing into an art form. Almost. The contrast with V.S. Naipaul puts them in their place. His portrait of the post colonial world is black, and it is bitter, but it is made in good faith, it contains a large portion of the truth, and it is depicted with consummate artistry. Starting with his experiences as a very junior clerk in his native Trinidad, Naipaul's narrator notes "The volumes smelled of fish glue. This was what they were bound with; and I suppose the glue was made from a boiling down of fish bones and skin and offal. It was the colour of honey; it dried very hard, and every careless golden drip had the clarity of glass; but it never lost the smell of fish and rotteness." Note the first unappetizing sensation, how the three physical details in the next sentence shift our attention from the first fact, only to be recapitulated in the final word. This is a special, subtle form of writing.

The theme of the novel consists of several portraits of flawed men who lived and experienced Trinidad. There is the promising English travel writer Foster Morris, who ultimately failed to achieve his full potential. There is the radical black revolutionary Lebrun who is highly intelligent and has many acute things to say about the narrarator's writing, yet ends as an apologist for the Soviet Union and for various African tyrannies. There is a long chapter on Sir Walter Raleigh's futile attempt to find El Dorado, with a discussion of the lies and brutalities he committed in a futilte attempt to save his neck from an ungrateful English government. There is an even longer one on General Miranda, who attempted to free Latin America from the Spanish. The pictures of Raleigh and especially Miranda are damning. Miranda promises to free the slaves of Venezuela, at another time promises his English and Franco-Haitian allies he will do nothing. He has traded slaves in the past, his career has been marked with incompetence and venality, and his political program is vague and pompous. It is not suprisingly that when he arrives in Venezuela the priests will successfully rouse the common people against him as an infidel, that Venezuela will collapse into racial and class strife and that Miranda will be captured and die in a Spanish jail. Finally there is the narrator's visit to a dreary one party state, marked with corruption and violence against the East Asian minority, and where an old colleague of the narrator will be murdered by powerful officials for being too effective against bribery. There is an everpresent ugliness and bigotry. Everywhere there is violence and cruelty: the Spanish and the British in Miranda's Trinidad both butcher slave rebels who have their own violent customs. In one African country a child is butchered so that a chief can be washed in its blood. But the crushing of the chiefs by the central government is no force for progress, but merely a newer and even more unpleasant tyranny. Yet in all these pictures there is something more than condemnation. It is not quite compassion, not quite mercy, in the way that Naipaul agrees that there is something more, something worthy in their lives. It appears to be the truth.

Is it? Naipaul's portrait of Lebrun is based, very obviously, on C.L.R. James, the famous author of The Black Jacobins. Yet Lebrun is at times a dishonest apologist for the Soviet Union, while the real James was very famously a Trotskyist sympathizer. The difference is important: it would not be fair to blames American fundamentalists for the Inquisition. In the end of the Lebrun chapter Lebrun is unable to fully recognize his own memories. "For the interviewer or the television producer it was enough, a text for today; not understanding that Lebrun's anguish had begun there, with the old coachman taking him far back, almost to the times of slavery, as to the good times. But perhaps, too, in extreme old age, he had become a child again, looking only for peace." This is very subtle, but it is not as magnaminous as it appears. It is less an act of justice, as an indulgence, to a character whom Naipaul has subtly manipulated for his convenience. It reminds us of the other side of Naipaul; the spiteful comments on E.M. Forster and the ungenerous attitude towards Salman Rushdie, the critic of Indira Gandhi and Evita Peron who praised the Hindu Communalist government of India during a particularly nasty bout of intercommunal rioting, the man who is admired and praised by the Anglo-American right for condemning the Third World, less for its cruelties (so often unavoidable), but for not being English. Is Naipaul really showing sympathy or is he just too infinitely graceful and subtle to reveal his full contempt? Does he fear showing spontaneity, even love, because he thinks it is only really sentimentality? Something is missing.

This is a good and challenging novel. It is also perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical, and brazenly so. There is no attempt on the part of the narrator (whom Naipaul uses, first to explain how the colonial baggage affects his characters [characters, incidentally, whom you've met in other Naipaul novels], and then to represent the brainchild of a number of "unwritten" stories told in "A Way in the World's" pages) to distance himself from Naipaul's own experiences in Trinidad, England, and then all over the world, as the "voice" of the former colonials. This weight of this book's message comes late, making a challenging read worthwhile.

_A Bend In The River_ is Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul's effective, if at times ponderously written, study of major disruptions faced by non-black inhabitants of post-Colonial Congo. Naipaul tells his story from the perspective of Salim, a Muslim shopkeeper, whose family emigrated to the Congo from the east coast of Africa many years before. Under the radicalization program of the "Big Man," Salim's business is confiscated and placed into the hands of a semi-illiterate, womanizing, drunkard. Salim's position is reduced to manager and part-time chauffeur to the new owner.

Among those caught up in the "revolution" are Salim's European friends, Reginald and his wife, Yvette. Formerly in an important position of influence with the African "Big Man," Reginald suddenly becomes a persona non grata. In addition, many non-indigenous people are forced to flee their beloved adopted land after threats of arrest and possible bodily harm.

Naipaul has received criticism for racism for allegedly siding with the former European colonialists and in his negative portrayals of the native Africans. On the surface Naipaul may appear to be somewhat one-sided in the book by not touching on any civil rights abuses the Europeans may have previously perpetrated against native Africans. The only evidence of subjugation Naipaul mentions in the book is of Africans having in the past to address European colonialists as "monsieur" or "madam." In fairness to the author, it must be recognized that _A Bend In The River_ is a work of fiction told from the standpoint of a recently disenfrancised Muslim, whose post-colonial experiences would necessarily embitter him and cause his feelings to be skewed. Naipaul has, after all, not pretended to have written a non-fiction record akin to the history of British India, or of pre-Pol Pot Cambodia, or of post-Tito Yugoslavia in which the atrocities of the previous eras should and must be balanced against those of contemporary times.

Naipaul in one of his typically politically-incorrect interviews said these very words about the continent. A BEND IN THE RIVER is therefore a gloomy book and offers a pessimistic view of Africa. If Conrad had not already taken the title, then this book could easily have been called HEART OF DARKNESS. That's not a coincidence either as Naipaul is frequently compared to Conrad in terms of literary style and theme. The setting is the same also. Although A BEND.. takes place in a fictitious African country it can be read as either Congo or Uganda as it is based on his visits to those countries in the 1960's.

The principal character and narrator of the story is Salim, an Indian and Muslim. Indian merchant families like his have been living in the coastal area of the country for generations. The blacks live inland. Salim decides to move to a small, formerly-quaint colonial town in the interior to set up shop and sell cloth. He is immediately at a loss, in conflict, confused - a man in search of an identity in a country in search of itself. Salim must contend with the rapidly changing social, economic and political environment of the newly independent country while at the same time sort out his own world view in the face of the contending opinions of the other characters. There is the influence of the Big Man - and simply because he is president for life - his interests must be served. There are others: a Belgian priest; Raymond, the white speech writer for the Big Man; Yvette, Raymond's wife; Mahesh, a disillusioned Indian, and finally, the most unlikey important character - Ferdinand. He is a simple boy from the "bush", who, in this upside-down country, becomes Governor of the town after the nation is "radicalized" by the Big Man.

The newly-independent former-colony and the various cultural and political influences of the inhabitants are the foils for two of Naipaul's favorite themes. First is his affinity for, and identity with, dispossessed persons. Dispossessed in the personal sense of the word - no home, no country, no identity - a nobody. Following from this personal sense of rootlessness and anomie is Naipaul's un-romantic and oftentimes very critical assessment of the ability of developing countries to sustain the hopes and dreams of their people. This is ably summed up by Ferdinand. "We are all going to hell, and everyman knows this in his bones...everyone want's to make his money and run away. But where?"

Naipaul's prose is direct, not symbolic, so many students of Post Colonial literature have had a field-day dissecting Naipaul's various literary allusions and castigate him as a conservative and supporter of neo-colonialism. If that's your area of interest and particular world-view then you will definitely not enjoy A BEND.. If on the other hand you simply like well written, slightly satirical novels with finely-detailed characters and are inclined to not take writers or your reading material too seriously then this is a book you'll definitely enjoy.

Naipaul's "A Bend in the River" is almost as much reportage as fiction. The novel is set in the city of Kisangani, on the Congo River in Congo (formerly the Zaire river in Zaire) -- though interestingly, the author never says this explicitly. I have never seen an account as to what Naipaul's experiences in Zaire were exactly, but he manages to tell the story of the early days of Zaire's independence, after colonial rule as the Belgian Congo.

The protagonist is a young Indian from the Eastern coast. ("Indian" in the sense of his ethnicity, his family has been in Africa longer than they can remember.) He has purchased a shop in Kisangani, and trys to build up his business as the "big man" consolidates power in the newly independent country. Things go from bad to worse, for the new shopkeeper and the country. Though this is fiction, every word is true.

Naipaul writes beautifully, and has many insights into Africa, colonialism, history, and life. This is one of the few books that I have read and enjoyed more than once.

Some people recommend Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" to readers looking for an "African" novel. But to recommend "Things Fall Apart" over "A Bend in the River" makes sense only if you can read just a single book about Africa. Achebe's novel is set in Nigeria; Naipaul's is about Zaire. It's like saying don't bother with "Brothers Karamozov", read "Great Expectations" instead. I should hope a serious reader would turn his attention to both.

(The last days of the Belgian Congo is the setting for Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible". Many good nonfiction stories from this time and place are found in "A Doctor's Life: Unique Stories" by William T. Close. A literary approach to the early days of the Belgian Congo is Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".)

In a Free State won the Booker Prize in 1971 as the best novel by a Commonwealth author. The books consists of two short stories, two travel pieces and the title novella.

The 120 odd page novella, "In a Free State," describes a visit to a remote hotel deep in the African bush. Two Europeans travel overland over rutted roads to a run down deserted hotel. Bobby and Linda travel as a couple but Bobby prefers men. He tries to seduce the African servant boy but is rebuffed. This book marks Naipaul complete departure from the folksy half-joking style of his earliest works. There's no warmth or humor just a cold depiction early post-colonial Africa.

"One Out of Many," a thirty page short story, is more in the style of his earliest works: "A House for Mr. Biswas," "The Mystic Masseur, " and "Miguel Street." It tells the story of Santosh, a poor Hindu who accompanies his employer from Bombay to Washington, where the employer has taken up a diplomatic posting. Santosh had slept on the sidewalk in Bombay, that being impermissible in Washington, his boss generously gives him use of a walk closet as his sleeping quarters. He misses the companionship of sleeping on the Bombay sidewalks under the stars with his friends. He runs away from his boss, to whom he owes his plane fare from India and takes a job at a newly opened Indian restaurant. Santosh is terrified by the race riots that erupt in Washington. He meets a hubshi (black) woman and is disgusted at himself for having sex with her. He has some money because he sells some of the weed he has brought with him from India. This weed, which grows wild and free for the gathering in India, is marijuana. He is so socially inept that he buys a bright green suit. He becomes wise to the ways of the world and demands a raise from his restaurateur boss who has been paying him miserably. All the while he is afraid his old employer will come to take him back or have him deported. On the advice of his new boss he marries the hubshi woman and becomes a U.S. citizen, thereby solving all his problems. The fact that Santosh has a wife and children back in his home village in India doesn't matter.

A very funny touching story that would have made a great novel, maybe titled: "A Green Card for Mr. Santosh." I liked this better than the title novella which is dark, gloomy and has no real action: Bobby and Linda drive through the African bush country, they stay at a run down hotel, they walk through the town one night. That's it!

The other short story is unmemorable. The two travel narratives dealing with sightseeing trips to Egypt are very good and are much like Naipaul's two Islamic travel books for their insightful and critical look at a strange culture.

The journey of an immigrant landing in the United States for the first time begins long before he sees the statue of liberty and ends long after he qualifies for his first passport. The decision to leave home, leave culture and comfort, the excited transition to a brave new world, and then the acclimatization, the realization that the rest of your life will occur in this new, lonely culture.
V.S. Naipaul's short story "One out of Many", from his collection In a Free State, eloquently chronicles one man's journey to a new life in the United States. We meet Santosh, a poorly-educated servant to a diplomat, and Naipaul beautifully relates his home, his culture, and his community. However, Santosh leaves India with his master to go to Washington D.C., in search, as we all are, of opportunities and of the land of plenty. However, Santosh's journey not only destroys his painful idealism but also raises important questions about identity, both cultural and personal.
The character of Santosh, ill-educated, painfully naïve to American ways, learns much about the United States, befriending a black woman, experiencing the Washington race riots, and sadly, becoming more and more alienated from this world he thought he would embrace so perfectly. The contrast of Indian society with the American way of life leaves Santosh alienated, but also presents to the reader the dilemma of cross-culture assimilation. Should one assimilate into a different culture? Is it possible to truly accept yourself when your identity depends on a community thousands of miles away?
"One out of Many" never tries to represent an entire immigrant population, nor does it make a political statement in that explicit sense. It's simply the story of Santosh, his journey , what he finds, and does not find, in the land of riches, in America. Excellent, relevant reading.

So said the disillusioned and dejected West Indian when confronted with the reality of his ruined life in London. His brother had taken advantage of him, and having denied himself for his brother's sake, the betrayal was all the more bitter. Hate and revenge are now his primary emotions and he shows this with his words "tell me who to kill", the title of one of this book's five stories. The stories are principally about the emotional weight carried by strangers in foreign lands (West Indians in England, Indians in the U.S, English in Africa), and the cultural anomie that comes with it.

This book which won England's Booker prize in 1971 is comprised of two novellas, the short-story that is the book's title and a prologue and epilogue which are in the narrator's voice and describe impressions from his travel journal. Besides exploring the theme of alienation, the common thread that connects these stories is the search for what it is that causes the destructive impulses that lie deep within us to rise to the surface.

In a more recent book, READING AND WRITING, Naipaul in talking about his art said "one day, in my almost fixed depression, I began to see what my material might be" In homage to his brooding inspiration this book then is an excellent exploration of Naipaul's well known darker themes. What makes us cruel to one another? Why do we fear, hate, and oppress others? The stories are harsh and imaginatively cruel: The irrational beating of a hapless tramp and the whipping of some poor Egyptian children who were scrounging for sandwiches tossed by Italian tourists.

Naipaul is genre-bending with his fiction and where others may feel compelled to offer hope and a romantic denouement to their story, this author does not subscribe to such illusions about the human heart. At least not in any obvious way. The positive message is there in the title story, it's just hidden. Bobby and Linda are seeking refuge in the last redoubt of Englishness left in Africa. Like all the other characters in the book they are seperated from their familiar traditions and society. Far from being alienated however they have something within - a sense of self. It gives them wholeness. Here we see the true potential of the human heart to be IN A FREE STATE even when all around us is chaos. As pessimistic a view as this book generally is, I still found it entertaining and because Naipaul offers such a small token of hope, it makes it all the more precious.

"I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us" (Franz Kafka)

There is something of Graham Greene in "Sir Vidia's Shadow," Paul Theroux's account of the end of his relationship with Nobel laureate V.S. (Vidia) Naipaul. What sustains the friendship between these two expatriate authors over 30 years? What eventually destroys it? How do place, class, calling, ideas, politics, and pheromones factor in their story? What is friendship anyway? These themes of Theroux also inspire Greene's "The End of the Affair."

Two authors -- one established, the other just starting out -- meet in Uganda in 1966. Naipaul, the established one, is crabbed, dismissive, paranoid, needy, fussy, rule-bound, misogynistic, cheap, but immensely talented and eager to mentor. Theroux is accepting, ingratiating, adventuresome, admiring, and willing to pick up every check. Like partners in a bad marriage, they complement each other. Over the years, as friends, they support each other through the usual crises of life. As artists, they read each other's work and carry on a dialogue about writing, books, and other authors. Their shared interest in the writer's craft sustains their friendship, despite their personal differences.

Naipaul's wife Pat also supplies some glue. Naipaul treats her shabbily, but Pat nevertheless "loved him -- loved him without condition -- praised him, lived for him, delighted in his success in the most unselfish way.... Possibly there was an element of fear in it -- the fear of losing him, the fear of her own futility and her being rejected.... She was discreet. She was kind, she was generous, she was restrained and magnanimous; she was the soul of politeness, she was grateful; she was all the things Vidia was not." (312) Theroux, who would acquire and lose a family of his own during the course of his relationship with Naipaul, desires Pat almost from the start. Naipaul rejects Pat's body, like a piece of undigestible sinew, in favor of prostitutes and other secret lovers. When Pat dies and Naipaul immediately remarries, his tactless new wife drives a wedge between old friends.

Or does she? "Sir Vidia's Shadow" -- part memoir, part biography, part domestic drama, part psychological study, part literary criticism -- is not so clear. Perhaps Theroux, the author of 22 books, simply outgrows his sycophant's role: by book's end, in fact, dueling faxes replace dutiful lessons over lunch, and Sir Vidia's shadow shrinks literally to nothing. Perhaps there is something more, a context to the friendship that, though hinted at, goes unverbalized, thus clouding the book's focus. In fact, Theroux's portrait of Naipaul is extensive, but Naipaul is an independent -- a secretive -- man, and Theroux's portrait of himself is more limited, more guarded still.

Besides Graham Greene, in other words, there is something of Henry James in "Sir Vidia's Shadow," but it is James without the information to clearly distinguish the protagonists from the victims.

This book was actually a page turner! Paul's memory, perception, and generosity towards his great friend was a special gift to those of us who love VS Naipaul's writing as well as that of Paul theroux. His writing is so perceptive that I feel as though we have a sort of relationship. I knew Naipaul before I knew Theroux, but became addicted to theroux soon after reading My Secret History. What a joy to see a mutually beneficial friendship between two such artists. We celebrate your ability to reveal so much of yourself and the world to us. Also, I know what it is to lose a great friend and yet have a feeling of liberation. It also seems as though people misunderstood your use of the word Shadow. I was shocked to read some of the negative reviews by critics. Perhaps they were trying to be clever? they seemed to be telling more about themselves than Paul Theroux or Vidia. I like thinking that someone who has brought so much insight and pleasure into my life might read this review! thank you! Melissa

This is the story of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with his fellow-novelist V. S. Naipaul. Part social history, part biography, part autobiography, it is above all a beautifully written and fascinating study of a writer's craft and life.

Both men are prolific and accomplished writers. Naipaul has written novels set in all five continents. His novels include 'Guerrillas', 'In a Free State' and 'A House for Mr Biswas'. He has also written a history of Trinidad, 'The Loss of El Dorado'. Theroux is the author of 'The Mosquito Coast', 'The Great Railway Bazaar' and many other stories, novels and travel books.

Both men are remarkably self-contained; both are wandering scholars. Naipaul is famously rude and difficult. As a visiting professor in New York, he refused to give any classes. He once boasted, "I hate all music." He appears to disparage all contemporary novelists, and most past ones: he said that he hated Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy and Henry James. (He did at least admit to admiring Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' and Rudyard Kipling's 'Plain Tales from the Hills', and he does have a justified contempt for George Orwell.)

Theroux writes, "the best writers are the most fanatical." (Perhaps excellence at any work demands a certain fanaticism?) Certainly, Naipaul's uncompromising attention to his craft, his hatred of cant, of poses and affectation, of style, reveal the monomania necessary, but not sufficient, to creativity. The results in his work are uneven, but Theroux believes that Naipaul has produced one undoubted masterpiece, 'A House for Mr Biswas': readers should judge for themselves.

Theroux too is obviously not an easy man: his wanderlust, his unpleasant sexual boasting and his tactless responses to Naipaul's second marriage show how difficult he finds it to form relationships. Consequently this rare long friendship must have meant much to both men: it finished only recently, spurring Theroux to write this account. The book ends in a haunting last encounter, full of confusion, pain and rejection.

I bought this book after a fair amount of consideration. Most foreign writers, from Dickens to Camus, have visited the US and come away with nothing good to say. It become a rote right of passage for Nobel-bound authors to visit the US, find it lumpen and lame, and then bring out a margin travel book about the experience.

There is none of this Naipaul's book, which, true to the title, is concerned with the Southern states. Anyone familiar with Naipaul's other travel works will recognize the form: This is not a book about the writer in a strange place; this is a book of stories about people and their experiences with home. Naipaul meets lay preachers and famous writers (Eudora Welty) and bible-thumping Southern politicans. He meets the self-described, proud "rednecks" (who fascinate him: Only a foreigner, and perhaps only VS Naipaul, could beautify these people, and in them find a sort of culture and heroic resistance in their Cat hats and beer guts). Race, religion and the tragic Southern history are the dominant themes of this book. If you read it, you will come away with a new sense of Southern history and Southern people. It may not be the truth, but it's close to it.

V.S. Naipaul prods Americans right on the sore spot, the South and racism. As an Indian, who surely had witnessed prejudice of race, nationality and economic status in India and the West Indies, he is acutely aware of the nuances in US racial relations in the South. And he homes in on them as best as an outside observer can.

His visit to Tuskegee is the high point of the book. The proud, historical institute is in shabby surroundings. But he could not answer, for me, if Tuskegee had fallen on hard times, or had always been part of a community that encompassed all kinds of folk. He is critical, but not always unerring in his estimation of American culture. But then, he is an outsider.

Still, an interesting read from a noted writer, and a way to look inside American through a foreigner's eyes, the way we do when we read Trollope, for example.

V. S. Naipaul went to visit the American South with the intention of writing a book about race relations, but as he traveled from state to state, or rather from community to community, he found that racism was less the defining episteme of southern culture than a pervasive devotion to mythology--the core myths of fundamentalism, the myths of ante-bellum splendor and gallantry, the myths of special southern providence. Elvis, tobacco, and fatness are all integrated into Naipaul's perception of a South wallowing in self-mythology, a culture that abounds in self-consciousness without ever achieving relativism. Nonetheless, Naipaul finds, he likes traveling in the South, and in the end he writes a book which is as gentle and sympathetic to his subject as could reasonably be desired.
Not an American, neither White nor Black, certainly not a man of religion, Naipaul credits the comforts and strengths that religiosity brings to Southerners of both races, while he also identifies the stifling consequences. This is easily the most accurate and insightful portrayal of the South that I've ever read, not even excluding literary giants like Faulkner and Welty.
The writing style is remarkably casual, almost off-hand, not at all high-brow, yet the reader will find that Naipaul knows exactly what he wants to say and where he thinks the "turn in the south" will take us.

This is the first book of Naipaul I have read. I heard much about him and the title of this book set up all sorts of expectations, in line with some of my own thoughts - About a 1000 years of foreign rule, about the mindless rape of a civilization by conquerors and plunderers, about generations raised in fear and lack of pride in ones' nations... these were the wounds I expected Naipaul to address.

VSN instead goes off on a complete tangent, showing once again how hard it is for the Western descendents of Aristotelian logic and philosophy, to understand the Vedic concept of the Singularity. The one thing good though, and I shall read more of Naipaul, is his amazing confidence and ability to draw and link seemingly unconnected issues, albeit 'incorrectly'. VSN does come across a man of strong opinions and the book is a good beginner to him.

But the book itself falls awfully short on numerous accounts and is indeed a highly biased and prejudiced perspective. VSN mentions how Gandhi's writings can choke the reader with a differing perspective, and yet ironically - he commits precisely the same error. He speaks of Gandhi's inability to give attention to landscape and build characters in his book, but he fails to realize that Gandhi is a freedom fighter, not an author. VSN speaks from the ivory tower of semi-self-actualization, whereas Gandhi speaks from the perspective of himself, what VSN criticizes as Subjective writing - and yet, VSN makes the same error in his display of a complete non-understanding of the Vedic philosophy.

The book is a good read though, it points out some good read-worthy leads. But he overarchs in his attempt to link everything that is bad in India to a certain Hindu philosophy. VSN is patently wrong in his conclusions drawn in 1970 - as time has shown. He speaks of India's intellectual second-rate-ness; and yet it is India which is the leader in 2000 in the global software industry. VSN is out of depth with his interpretations of Vedic philosophy - he perceives the Indian attempt at achieving unity with the Bhramana and the realization of the self; as a rejection and escapism from reality.

Perhaps the author is not so self actualized after all...

But hey, VSN has a sharp and lethal tongue, and I am keen to read his other books - Just dont form an opinion of India based on this outdated book. VSN also has done some good research and the facts are always well laid out - his interpretations are 'faulty'

As an expat, and with a broader perspective than the usual cocooned Indian, I very much agree with Mr. Naipaul.
India is a sick civilation, surviving much like the common roach through thick and thin, though to questionable purpose.

Can be called a parasitic civilization, evolution gone wrong, peopled by psychoses.
With as much of an inviting lifestyle as Pond-Scumia.

I suggest an objective reading of the book (with a good dose of self-psychology)- especially if you think India is a "great country".

Naipaul ruthlessly mauls the past of this 'area of darkness' that is India and comes up with the revelation that a civilization of conquest is also a civilization of defeat. He observes that because of its unconcealed origin in conquests over many centuries, the Indian civilization has been shot through with ambiguous beliefs that can at times exalt men and at times abase them. Written at the end of his journey during the emergencies it reminds the reader that Gandhi's India of non-violencce was created in too quick a time between 1919 and 1930. Of Gandhism there remains the emblem and the energy. The energy has turned malignant. India needed a new code but there is none. The rules are gone. And this country, defeated, plundered over centuries, one fourth of its population under the serfdom of untouchability- people without a country only with masters, sudedenly discovers that it is cruel and horribly violent. Naipaul reiterates that India's crisis is neither political nor economic. They are but part of a larger crisis, that of a decaying civilization and only hope remains in further quick decay as he observed in 'An Area of Darkness' many years ago. The book I would recommend most among his non-fictions.

This book caused an uproar when it was first published, in 1982. After 9/11, it gained itself a whole new readership. Naipaul's first "Islam" book is a collection of opinions about the effect of Islam on what he calls the "converted" (non-Arab)peoples ... the Iranians, who woke up from history with the new knowledge of an surrounding infidel civilization, one that could not be dominated and so instead was to be rejected ... rejected, and depended upon, the Pakistanis, who threw out the rule of law that they inherited from their former British administrators and replaced it with nothing. This book also concerns itself with the Malay cultures of Malaysia and Indonesians, whom Naipaul seems to both admire and disdain. The admiration stems from their post-war economic achievements (which he attributes to their Chinese minorities); the distain stems from the short-sightedness of their "New Islam" leanings, and their iconoclastic reaction to their pre-Islamic history (which he seems to respect more than Islam ... no surprise, since they were Hindu cultures). As always, Naipaul uses the stories of ordinary people to prove what he considers Islam's cultural destructiveness, a sort of colonization no better or worse that the Western form that he experienced in his boyhood Trinidad.

That said, this is a great book, full of the clear-eyed truths for which Naipaul is so well known. But, as with this book's sequel, "Among the Believers," it has to be taken with a grain a salt: Naipaul, as a Brahmin, deeply resents the affect of Islam of his marble model of ancient India. But his assessments will resonant very clearly with those who approach the subject of Islam, especially "New Islam," with an open mind.

Mr. Naipaul's treatment of a what has now become a very contemporary issue is definitely commendable. He asks all the questions you'd like to ask and then some. While many have called this an opinionated piece of work, after reading the book I am truly surprised about such conclusions. Mr. Naipaul takes the reader on a journey through some of the bedrock Islamic societies to winnow fact from fiction and in doing so sets forth the state of affairs with remarkable practicality, bereft of either political correctness or feigned understanding of the tortuous evolution of religion and its convenient interpretation. What a refreshing change compared to the politically correct drivel we read everyday in the papers!!

The dialogs with everyday folk in Iran right after the revolution, the description of the abject conditions in Pakistan are indeed illuminating. The book has much to offer by way of insights especially into the Islamic way of life and origins of Islamic societies in Malaysia and Indonesia (e.g., the "statistical Muslim"). I only wish he had included the Middle Eastern countries in his book. It would have been quiet interesting to read what he has to say about the virulent strains of Islamic fundamentalism that has risen in those parts of the world.

In sum, the book is definitely a good read. I would ask the reader to set aside any prejudiced reviews before reading this book. For the most part Mr. Naipaul adopts a descriptive style of writing and lets the reader connect the dots and draw conclusions. Of course the book is peppered with the author's own interpretations but I did not find them overbearing in any way. It still comes across as a very balanced look at some parts of the Islamic world.

I would strongly recommend the reader to visit ...to view/listen/read Sir Vidia's Nobel lecture. It offers interesting insights into the writer's journey.

Seems from the bitter tone of the negative reviews that Naipaul has struck a nerve, which means he probably got it right. Naipaul makes no pretensions to scholarship; he is a skeptic who calls it as he sees it. Early on in the book, he calls himself a "seeker," which by itself undercuts accusations that he is a biased Hindu nationalist with an axe to grind. Regardless, Naipaul doesn't condemn Islam; he expresses his doubts about a particular interpretation of Islam and its political manifestations in particular societies at a very specific time in history. Iran's recent softening of its stance toward the West especially highlights Naipaul's prescience vis a vis his analysis of that nation's complicated ambivalence toward the United States and Europe.

Similarly, any anti-Muslim bigot who uses Naipaul to rationalize an irrational hatred cleary refuses to acknowledge the profoundly sympathetic tone of Naipaul's portrayals of the people he meets and places he goes. Naipaul doubts ideology, not individuals. Outstanding travel writing.