Author: V S Naipaul
Publisher: Picador India
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 290
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0330487167
Description
This work is Naipaul's semi-autobiographical account - at once painful and hilarious, always concerned - of his first visit to India, the land of his forebears. He was twenty-nine years old; he stayed for a year.
From the moment of his inasuspicious arrival in Prohibition-dry Bombay, bearing whisky and cheap brandy, he began to experience a sense of cultural estrangment from the subcontinent. It became for him a land of myths, an area of darkness closing up behind him as he traveled.
This book is a work of sharp luminosity whose insights continue to inform travelers of all generations to India.
REVIEWS:
His narrative skill is spectacular. One returns with pleasure to the slow hand-in-hand revelation of both India and himself.
= The Times
Brilliant, true autobiography arises when a man encounters something in his life which shocks him..Tender, lyrical, explosive and cruel.
= Observer