Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples

by V. S. Naipaul

Overview

The Nobel Prize-winning author offers an insightful follow-up to his landmark travelogue Among the Believers: a "brilliant … powerfully observed, stylistically elegant exploration" (The New York Times) that’s the result of a five-month journey through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia, countries where dreams of Islamic purity clash with economic and political realities. 

Fourteen years after the publication of his landmark travel narrative Among the Believers, V. S. Naipaul returned to the four non-Arab Islamic countries he reported on so vividly at the time of Ayatollah Khomeini's triumph in Iran. Beyond Belief is the result of his five-month journey in 1995 through lands where descendants of Muslim converts live at odds with indigenous traditions.

In extended conversations with a vast number of people—a rare survivor of the martyr brigades of the Iran-Iraq war, a young intellectual training as a Marxist guerilla in Baluchistan, an impoverished elderly couple in Teheran whose dusty Baccarat chandeliers preserve the memory of vanished wealth, and countless others—V. S. Naipaul deliberately effaces himself to let the voices of his subjects come through. Yet the result is a collection of stories that has the author's unmistakable stamp. With its incisive observation and brilliant cultural analysis, Beyond Belief is a startling and revelatory addition to the Naipaul canon.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375706486
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1999
Series:	Vintage International
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	567,746
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

V.S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.
 
His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now.
 
In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.

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

Table of Contents

Prologue	xi
PART I Indonesia The Flight of the N-250
1. The Man of the Moment	3
2. History	21
3. A Convert	35
4. A Sacred Place	49
5. Kampung	65
6. Below the Lava	75
7. Oh Mama! Oh Papa!	95
8. Ghosts	108
PART II Iran The justice of Ali
1. The Foundation of the Oppressed	133
2. Mr. Jaffrey's Round Trip	143
3. The Great War	156
4. Salt Land	165
5. The jail	179
6. The Martyr	189
7. Qom: The Punisher	200
8. Cancer	221
9. The Two Tribes	233
PART III Pakistan Dropping off the Map
1.A Criminal Enterprise	245
2. The Polity	253
3. Rana in His Village	266
4. Guerrilla	275
5. Penitent	290
6. Loss	303
7. From the North	313
8. Ali's Footprint	327
9. War	340
PART IV Malaysian Postscript Raising the Coconut Shell
1. Old Clothes	361
2. New Model	372
3. The Bomoh's Son	381
4. The Other World	393

Editorial Reviews

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Brilliant.... A powerfully observed, stylistically elegant exploration." —The New York Times

"The book's strength lies in Naipaul's extraordinary ability as a storyteller to draw striking portraits of a cross section of individuals." —The Boston Globe

"Highly accomplished. . . . Another display of Naipaul's remarkable talent." —The Independent (London)

From the Publisher

Naipaul is an incomparable chronicler of sacred survivals and the desperation the sacred has to keep at bay. -- New York Times Book Review

Michael Ignatieff

In this spiritual travelogue, novelist and essayist Naipaul picks up where he left off in his earlierAmong the Believers (1981). Whereas in that earlier work he focused primarily on his own stories of his encounters with the revolutionary potential of Islam in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, here he allows individuals in those countries to tell their own stories about their experiences with the Islamic faith. Crucial to Naipaul's argument is what he sees as the imperialism of Islam. "Everyone who is not an Arab who is a Muslim is a convert. Islam is not simply a matter of conscience or private belief. It makes imperial demands.... The disturbance for societies is immense, and even for a thousand years can remain unsolved." In Iran, for example, a young teacher remembers with anguish and cool reflection giving up his university education to be a part of Khomeini's religious revolution, only later to be jailed and almost killed by the Revolutionary Guards for failing to give Khomeini unwavering support. Naipaul also recounts the story of an Indonesian leader who integrated Western technology with his Muslim faith in order to gain a lucrative job in the Suharto administration. Naipaul's luminous prose provides glimpses of insight into the lives of ordinary people whose dedication and commitment to the practice of Islam is the foundation of their lives. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A Trinidadian of Indian ancestry who was educated in England, Naipaul has 22 books (both fiction and nonfiction) to his credit. In Among the Believers (1981), he sharply described the damaging effect of rising Islamic fundamentalism in the four predominantly Muslim but non-Arab countries, which he had visited: Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Iran. The constant note of his many interviews was that fundamentalist monomania gradually kills a society, destroying tolerance and pluralism and uprooting people from their history. Visiting the same countries again over the past decade, and talking to many of the same people, he lays out in Beyond Belief the even greater social damage the years have brought: conformity enforced and dissidence suppressed, women's social progress reversed, poverty increased, honored customs abandoned, families disrupted, other religions oppressed, and paranoia rampant. Both readable and thoughtful, this book is highly recommended for both academic and public libraries.James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, VA

Library Journal

The famous novelist follows up on a travel narrative he published in 1981, Among the Believers, that examined the practice and revolutionary tendencies of Islam in Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Iran. Naipaul's visit to Indonesia took place before the onset of the current "Asian flu," at a time when the vast nation was enjoying a wave of prosperity. That prosperity, of course, has been very unevenly distributed. He notes, for instance, ancient neighborhoods and a unique vernacular architecture being knocked down to make way for glittering high-rises. Through interviews he portrays an Indonesian version of Islam triumphing peacefully over Hinduism, Catholicism, and even the remnants of Dutch colonialism, in large part by embracing Western technology and the faith of capitalism. Most instructive is Imaduddin, a man formerly at odds with the Suharto government but now one of its chief ministers, who took frequent refuge in the US but retains no affection for it. An engineer, he has had no trouble mingling his scientific training with an aggressive vision of Islam's place in the world and of Indonesia's role in Islam's rise. "Islam is not simply a matter of conscience," says Naipaul. "It makes imperial demands." This is even more apparent in Iran. Naipaul portrays a regime that has succeeded in disposing of every vestige of the shah but has yet to recover from its eight-year war with Iraq, and from the excesses of its own religious zeal. There are signs of liberation from the liberators, but Naipaul doesn't miss the human cost: a beautiful young woman in her black cloak, for instance, with a government job but no personal freedom, who retreats to her room every night and rageshysterically. Naipaul's evocation of a corrupt Pakistan, passionately Islamic but unsure of itself as a nation, captures the vibrancy of the place, but his Iran is mournful and haunting. A measured view of Islamic countries from the point of view of ordinary people rather than propagandists or detractors.

Kirkus Reviews