The Mystic Masseur
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
The Nobel Prize-winning author delivers a Dickensian novel that traces the unlikely career of a failed schoolteacher and village masseur who becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad.
“No one else … seems able to employ prose fiction so deeply as the very voice of exile.” —The New York Review of Books
In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel—his first—V. S. Naipaul chronicles the ascent of the impecunious village masseur Ganesh Ramsumair. To understand a little better, one has to realize that in the 1940s masseurs were the island’s medical practitioners of choice. As one character observes, “I know the sort of doctors they have in Trinidad. They think nothing of killing two, three people before breakfast.”
Ganesh’s journey is variously aided and impeded by a Dickensian cast of rogues and eccentrics. There’s his skeptical wife, Leela, whose schooling has made her excessively, fond. of; punctuation: marks!; and Leela’s father, Ramlogan, a man of startling mood changes and an ever-ready cutlass. There’s the aunt known as The Great Belcher. There are patients pursued by malign clouds or afflicted with an amorous fascination with bicycles. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad’s dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.
Customer Reviews
The Mystic Masseur
Being from a Carribean Country myself, and having grown up with Indian neighbours I first came across this book when i was 16 years old. I had to read a book for my english courses (I grew up in Suriname which is the only dutch -speaking country in South America) in school and i randomly chose this from a list provided by my teacher. From the very first letter i was captivated an in awe at this book, which seemed to be able to document every single part of my youth as though Mr Naipaul was my other next door neighbour. It was like a warm shower of recognition. The names, the description of a country which i had never visited, the rites, it all seemed so very much my own. And then the humour! Indescribably accurate , Naipaul has the rare ability, to make you laugh out , spilling tears as only the great stand-up comedians had done to me up until that time.
Nothing short of amazing, this book had an unmistakable impact on my life and the perception of my country and its place in the world. It showed me that in the end we are all the same, with the same fears, expectations, trials and tribulations.
If you haven't read V.S. Naipaul, you should not even be allowed to utter the word "littritcher"....
Allan Brewster, Architect