V. S. Naipaul’s graceful novel is a humorous and sensitive vision of the half-lives quietly lived out at the centre of our world.
Through five connected tales, V.S. Naipaul explores alienation, disruption and racial tension in a perilously unpredictable world.
In stories wrapped around a novella (later published as a separate volume), Naipaul introduces a range of discomfiting characters - a mercilessly bullied tramp, a compromised servant, a humiliated cousin and a disaffected tourist. In the central narrative he imagines a new Heart of Darkness for Africa, as a British civil servant and his wife drive back to their compound across an unnamed country: a dangerous journey into an increasingly disturbed and violent land.
V. S. Naipaul
About the Author
Novelist and travel writer V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad. He studied at Oxford University, then moved to London to work for the BBC.Other nominated books by V.S. Naipaul
One of V.S. Naipul’s best-known works, this account of chaos and corruption in post-colonial Africa evokes echoes of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
