A Writer's People

Ways of Looking and Feeling

By: V S Naipaul

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Paperback | 17 June 2011 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Paperback
256 Pages

Age
16+

Dimensions(cm)
19.8 x 12.9

Paperback

$35.75

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An astonishingly candid book from the Nobel Laureate about what has shaped his interpretation of literature and the world.

For the "serious traveller", one who is fully engaged with the world, there can be no single view. Our author's purpose, then, "is not literary criticism or biography", but only to set out the writing and ways of seeing to which he was exposed. So here is colonial Trinidad (the early Derek Walcott and Naipaul's own father); the culture of school (Flaubert and the classical world); England, where with the help of friends the writer seeks to make his way; and, inevitably for a colonial Indian, there is India, to be approached through the residue of Indian culture and the scattered memories of nineteenth-century immigrants, leading to a special understanding of Mahatma Gandhi.

Part meditation, part remembrance, A Writer's People is a privileged insight, full of gentleness, humour and feeling, into the mind of one of our greatest writers.

Industry Reviews

"Naipaul offers a liberating frankness. It's a rare and oddly exhilarating thing to encounter a master so manifestly unconcerned with being liked . . . The reputations of Austen, James and Hardy, after all, will most likely survive Naipaul's disdain, but if even one outraged devotee of those giants is turned on to Bond or Selvon or Chaudhuri, then A Writer's People will have done a noble service." -- "Ottawa Citizen ""[W]hat remains impressive . . . is Naipaul's sense of wonder at the worlds he has discovered. . . . Few writers have traveled as far from their origins as Naipaul has, and done it so willingly and with such single-mindedness, and few have regretted that estrangement quite so much." -- "The New York Times ""A brilliant work from a man who more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer." --"The Observer" "Naipaul writes wonderfully well. He is opinionated, tells gripping stories, loves beyond all else the specificity of details." --"The Independent" "Told in elegantly succinct prose, this deft book offers glimpses of autobiography as well as biography." --"Daily Mail" "From the Hardcover edition."

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