After a hiatus of seven years, V.S. Naipaul returned to fiction with A Way in the World: an exquisite meditation on rootlessness and belonging.
This vastly innovative novel explores colonial inheritance through a series of narratives that span continents, swing back and forth between past and present and delve into both autobiography and fiction.
Naipaul offers a personal choice of examples of Spanish and British imperial history in the Caribbean, including an imagined vision of Raleigh's last expedition and an introduction to Francisco de Miranda, a would-be liberator and precursor to Bolivar, which are placed within a context of echoing modernity and framed by two more personal, heavily autobiographical sections sketching the narrator – an eloquent yet humble man of Indian descent who grew up in Trinidad but spent much of his adult life in England and Africa.
Meditative and dramatic, these historical reconstructions, imbued with Naipaul's acute perception, drawn with his deft and sensitive touch, and told in his beautifully wrought prose, are transmuted into an astonishing novel exploring the profound and mysterious effect of history on the individual.
Industry Reviews
Praise for V. S. Naipaul and A Way in the World:
"Dickensian...a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life and work."
--"The New York Times"
"For more than 50 years, V. S. Naipaul has been an important voice with his keen, often painfully blunt insights into modern cultures and societies.... He has travelled and observed, producing a wealth of fiction and non-fiction about modern life that is as thought-provoking as it is engaging."
--"Edmonton Journal"
"For sheer abundance of talent there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V. S. Naipaul. He is the world's writer, a master of language and perception."
"--The New York Times Book Review"
"Naipaul more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer."
"--The Observer"
"It is Naipaul's uncanny ability to...uncover the raw wood beneath the highly polished veneers, that places his writing among the best in the English-speaking world."
--"Winnipeg Free Pres
