The World Is What It Is
The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul
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- 7,49 €
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- 7,49 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
This is the first major biography of V.S. Naipaul, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most compelling literary figures of the last fifty years.
With great feeling for his formidable body of work, and exclusive access to his private papers and personal recollections, Patrick French has produced a lucid and astonishing account of this enigmatic genius: one which looks sensitively and unflinchingly at his relationships, his development as a writer and as a man, his outspokenness, his peerless creativity, and his extraordinary and enduring position both outside and at the very centre of literary culture.
‘Its clarity, honesty, even-handedness, its panoramic range and close emotional focus, above all its virtually unprecedented access to the dark secret life at its heart, make it one of the most gripping biographies I’ve ever read’ Hilary Spurling, Observer
‘A brilliant biography: exemplary in its thoroughness, sympathetic but tough in tone . . . Reading it I was enthralled – and frequently amused (how incredibly funny Naipaul can be!)’ Spectator
‘A masterly performance . . . If a better biography is published this year, I shall be astonished’ Allan Massie, Literary Review
‘Remarkable. This biography will change the way we read Naipaul’s books’ Craig Brown, Book of the Week, Mail on Sunday
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
V.S. Naipaul's biographer aims not "to sit in judgment of the Nobel laureate, but to expose the subject with ruthless clarity to the calm eye of the reader." In this he succeeds admirably. Descendant of poor Brahmins, born in 1932 in Trinidad and educated in Oxford, Naipaul is haunted by matters of race, colonialism and sex. He is, says award-winning author French (Younghusband), both the racist (against those darker than he) and the victim of racial prejudice, tendencies that come through in his novels and in his treatment of friends and lovers. Haunting this biography are Naipaul's women. His wife, Pat, supported him, overlooked his affairs and his visits with prostitutes, and subordinated herself to his genius; Naipaul gave equally little to Margaret, his mistress. Naipaul and his books may be the subject of this work, but it is these and the other women whom he depended on and took for granted from his editor to his mother whose stories will keep that "calm eye of the reader" glued to the pages of this disturbing biography. 16 pages of photos.
