V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer

V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer PDF Author: Gillian Dooley
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 161117886X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
An introduction to the uncompromising artistic vision of the internationally acclaimed writer A survey of the life and work of the 2001 Nobel Laureate for Literature, V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer introduces readers to the writer widely viewed as a curmudgeonly novelist who finds special satisfaction in overturning the vogue presuppositions of his peers. Gillian Dooley takes an expansive look at Naipaul's literary career, from Miguel Street to Magic Seeds. From readings of his fiction, nonfiction, travel books, and volumes of letters, she elucidates the connections between Naipaul's personal experiences as a Hindu Indian from Trinidad living an expatriate life and the precise, euphonious prose with which he is synonymous. Dooley assesses each of Naipaul's major publications in light of his stated intentions and beliefs, and she traces the development of his writing style over a forty-year career. Devoting separate chapters to three of his chief works, A House for Mr. Biswas, In a Free State, and The Enigma of Arrival, she analyzes their critical reception and the primacy of Naipaul's specific narrative style and voice. Dooley emphasizes that it is, above all, Naipaul's refusal to compromise his vision in order to flatter or appease that has made him a controversial writer. At the same time she sees the integrity with which he reports his subjective response to the world as essential to the lasting success of his work.

V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer

V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer PDF Author: Gillian Dooley
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 161117886X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Get Book Here

Book Description
An introduction to the uncompromising artistic vision of the internationally acclaimed writer A survey of the life and work of the 2001 Nobel Laureate for Literature, V. S. Naipaul, Man and Writer introduces readers to the writer widely viewed as a curmudgeonly novelist who finds special satisfaction in overturning the vogue presuppositions of his peers. Gillian Dooley takes an expansive look at Naipaul's literary career, from Miguel Street to Magic Seeds. From readings of his fiction, nonfiction, travel books, and volumes of letters, she elucidates the connections between Naipaul's personal experiences as a Hindu Indian from Trinidad living an expatriate life and the precise, euphonious prose with which he is synonymous. Dooley assesses each of Naipaul's major publications in light of his stated intentions and beliefs, and she traces the development of his writing style over a forty-year career. Devoting separate chapters to three of his chief works, A House for Mr. Biswas, In a Free State, and The Enigma of Arrival, she analyzes their critical reception and the primacy of Naipaul's specific narrative style and voice. Dooley emphasizes that it is, above all, Naipaul's refusal to compromise his vision in order to flatter or appease that has made him a controversial writer. At the same time she sees the integrity with which he reports his subjective response to the world as essential to the lasting success of his work.

A Writer's People

A Writer's People PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307269485
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The Nobel Prize-winning author delivers an eloquent, candid, wide-ranging narrative that delves into the sometimes inadvertent process of creative and intellectual assimilation. “Bracing, surprising.... A meditation on art and life.” —The New York Review of Books V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of "fitting one civilization to another." In A Writer's People, he takes us into this process that has shaped both his writing and his life. Naipaul discusses the writers to whom he was exposed early on—Derek Walcott, Gustave Flaubert, and his father, among them—and his first encounters with literary culture. He illuminates the ways in which the writings of Gandhi, Nehru, and other Indian writers both reveal and conceal the authors themselves and their nation. And he brings the same scrutiny to bear on his own life: his early years in Trinidad; the empty spaces in his family history; his ever-evolving reactions to the more complicated India he would encounter for the first time at age thirty.

A House for Mr Biswas

A House for Mr Biswas PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Picador
ISBN: 9780330522892
Category : Autonomy (Psychology)
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Traditional Chinese edition of A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul. It is a story of Mr. Biswas's struggle for independence, but more importantly, it is his fight for dignity and a life with meaning. A House for Mr. Biswas is touted as Naipaul's finest novel. In Traditional Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

Miguel Street

Miguel Street PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307370615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
To the residents of Miguel Street, a derelict corner of Trinidad’s capital, their neighbourhood is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. There’s Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build “the thing without a name;” Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion; Big Foot, the dreaded bully with glass tear ducts; and the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. Their lives (and the legends their neighbours construct around them) are rendered by V. S. Naipaul with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion in this tender, funny novel.

The Enigma of Arrival

The Enigma of Arrival PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307744035
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
The Nobel Prize-winning author distills his wide experience of countries and peoples into a moving account of the rites of passage endured by all people and all communities undergoing change or decay. • "Naipaul's finest work." —Chicago Tribune "A subtly incisive self-reckoning." —The Washington Post Book World The story of a writer’s singular journey – from one place to another, and from one state of mind to another. At the midpoint of the century, the narrator leaves the British colony of Trinidad and comes to the ancient countryside of England. And from within the story of this journey – of departure and arrival, alienation and familiarity, home and homelessness – the writer reveals how, cut off from his “first” life in Trinidad, he enters a “second childhood of seeing and learning.” Clearly autobiographical, yet woven through with remarkable invention, The Enigma of Arrival is as rich and complex as any novel we have had from this exceptional writer. "The conclusion is both heart-breaking and bracing: the only antidote to destruction—of dreams, of reality—is remembering. As eloquently as anyone now writing, Naipaul remembers." —Time "Far and away the most curious novel I've read in a long time, and maybe the most hypnotic book I've ever read." —St. Petersburg Times

Half a Life

Half a Life PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307556565
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 231

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Book Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, the Nobel Prize-winning author produced his finest novel, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity. "A masterpiece." —Los Angeles Times Book Review The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career.

The World Is What It Is

The World Is What It Is PDF Author: Patrick French
Publisher: Viking Canada
ISBN: 9780670045297
Category : Authors, English
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Beginning with a richly detailed portrait of Naipaul's childhood in Trinidad, Patrick French gives us the boy born to an Indian family who wins a scholarship to Oxford at the age of 17. London in the 1950s offers his first literary success, but homesickness almost defeats Vidia, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an English woman who will stand by him for 4 decades, even as he embarks on a 24-year love affair which will feed his dizzying creativity. Informed by exclusive access to the subject's private papers and personal recollections, French's revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius.

A Way in the World

A Way in the World PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307401472
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 408

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Book Description
In his long-awaited, vastly innovative new novel, Naipaul, "one of literature's great travelers" (Los Angles Times), spans continents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiography and a fictional archaeology of colonialism. "Dickensian… a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life and work."—New York Times.

The Suffrage of Elvira

The Suffrage of Elvira PDF Author: Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
Publisher: Harmondsworth : Penguin
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In this book, an old, comically timid and absent-minded man, Surujpat Harbans, runs for office, aided by superstition, bribes, and an aggressive compaign.

The Mimic Men

The Mimic Men PDF Author: V. S. Naipaul
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307370534
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
A sober novel about a tempestuous and tormented soul carrying the burdens of postcolonialism in London. Winner of the W. H. Smith Literary Award.