A Way in the World

by V. S. Naipaul

Overview

In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul, "one of literature's great travelers" (Los Angles Times), spans continents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiography and a fictional archaeology of colonialism. "Dickensian . . . a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life and work."--New York Times.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307789297
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/20/2011
Series:	Vintage International
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	400
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than 30 books of fiction and nonfiction, including A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, A Turn in the South, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.

Hometown:

Wiltshire, England

Date of Birth:

August 17, 1932

Place of Birth:

Chaguanas, Trinidad

Education:

Queen's Royal College, Trinidad, 1943-48; B.A., University College, Oxford, 1953

Editorial Reviews

...[A] disturbing meditation on the relationships among personal, national and world histories and on inheritance and immortality.

New York Times Books of the Century

Naipaul has redefined the genre of historical fiction in this curiously old-fashioned, matter-of-fact, yet utterly eviscerating sequence of linked stories. These tales are told, not dramatized, a subtle narrative style that bespeaks authority and reflection. Our eloquent yet humble narrator and moral guide is an unnamed man of Indian descent who grew up on Trinidad but spent much of his adult life in England and Africa. He has several preoccupations. One is his slow and painful evolution as a writer; another is the symbiotic relationship between writing and history; and a third is the mercenary age of European exploration and conquest. Trinidad serves as a microcosm of the exploitation, volatile racial overlays, and barely controlled chaos of the so-called New World. Our narrator, who came of age just after World War II, is keenly attuned to the ugly fact that his island's history has been "burnt away." An uneasy mix of transplanted Africans, Indians, and whites circle suspiciously around each other, ripe for some sort of insurrection, a state of affairs as volatile now as it was in the early seventeenth century. Several stories profile revolutionary, but mad and delusional, figures, such as Sir Walter Raleigh, on his desperate journey back across the Atlantic in search of gold and redemption, and the crazy Venezuelan con man Francisco Miranda, who tried to invade South America and establish one immense republic. Each story ponders the betrayals and follies that have wreaked havoc in the nations of the Caribbean and Africa, acts of greed, ignorance, and hatred that are, sadly, quintessentially human. But so is the urge to tell stories, to live and to learn.

Donna Seaman

"Whichever way the narrative takes us...characters, ideas, events (are) elegantly juggled, set down and picked up again with a technical brilliance that comes with a lifetime's experience....Brave...fascinating...A WAY in the World is a beautiful lament." -- The New Republic

Caryl Phillips

"A bewitching piece of work by an artist at the peak of his abilities." —The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher