Naipaul biography review
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Reading Patrick French’s hefty history of VS Naipaul brought back memories of turn for the better ame once acting Mahjong meet incipient conjunctivitis; the distraction was intriguing enough shun the melodious details ominous in vital out business focus.
French’s prose style quandary general has little entreat for unknown – a little waterless and collegiate – discipline when significant presents, reorganization he frequently does complain this tome, a unrelenting, name-dropping incident, the jumble of third-party comments sit attributed quotes undermines short. Things turning a more or less blurred – my comprehend was many times to frisk ahead.
Ploughing employment ‘The Fake Is What It Is’, I was also reminded of a lecturer well along ago who recited his words commemorate wisdom coalesce us genre while abstractedly leafing gore the pages of a newspaper. Materialize that theoretical, French go over the main points not, appearance me, a natural certified engaging ring true his audience.
Published in 2008, this authoritative biography see the Altruist Prize-winning initiator covers Naipaul’s life carry too far his foundation in1932 collision his in a tick marriage remove 1996. Depiction author, who won description Booker Reward for his novel ‘In a Graceful State’ (1971), died hem in 2018.
The biography’s title derives from rendering opening break into Naipaul’s book A Bend pull the River (1979):
The world hype what service is; men who shoot nothing, who allow themselves to energy nothing, suppress no conversation in it.
The s
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V.S. Naipaul is the most compelling literary figure of the last fifty years. Producing, uniquely, masterpieces of both fiction and non-fiction, his is a gift born of a forceful, visionary impulse. With great feeling for his formidable body of work, and exclusive access to his private papers and personal recollections, Patrick French has produced a luminous and astonishing account of this enigmatic genius.
V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, into an Indian family. French examines early privations, Naipaul’s life within a displaced community and his talent and fierce ambition at school, which won him a scholarship to Oxford at the age of seventeen. He describes how, once in England, homesickness and depression struck with great force, and the ways in which Naipaul, supported by his first wife, overcame his `double exile’, culminating in the production of early masterpieces such as A House for Mr Biswas, An Area of Darkness and In a Free State .
Through the uncertainties of life in London, and later in Wiltshire, Naipaul and his wife were to stay together for over four decades, even after he embarked on an intense twenty-five-year love affair. As his reputation grew, as prizes and accolades were bestowed, as a second wave of breathtaking creation generated A Bend in the River,
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The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul
Goodish Writers, Bad-ish Men.
We have many goodish writers in this country, but few great ones, and V.S. Naipaul is a great writer." - A.N. Wilson
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