| VillageVoice |
Posted
on 11-Oct-01 12:59 PM
Naipaul finally received the elusive Nobel Prize. With all his crankiness, he is a great writer, and my personal favorite is House of Mr. Biswas. This book was a revelation to me.
It was probably my first English novel/work which I adored for its intimacy: joint families, Hindu rituals, petty family quarrels. Till then, my Egnlish readings had largely been a foreign pleasure: marvelling at the vast Russian landscape, and getting absored by alll the strange things that happened in Paris, London, and New York.
BTW, I re-lived that same experience while reading Samrat's "Arresting God in Kathmandu." The characters, and the scenes, were so strikingly familiar, I could touch them. Ghantaghar, New Road, Deepak Misra, Moti, Hiralal. It was only after a couple of stories did I get used to the book.
Some of the selected works of V S Naipaul:
The Mystic Masseur. London: Deutsch, 1957.
Miguel Street. London: Deutsch, 1959.
A House for Mr. Biswas. London: Deutsch, 1961.
The Middle Passage : Impressions of Five Societies รข?" British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America. London: Deutsch, 1962.
Mr Stone and the Knights Companion. London: Deutsch, 1963.
A Flag on the Island. London: Deutsch, 1967.
The Loss of El Dorado: A History. London: Deutsch, 1969.
In a Free State. London: Deutsch, 1971.
The Overcrowded Barracoon and Other Articles. London: Deutsch, 1972.
Guerrillas. London: Deutsch, 1975.
India : A Wounded Civilization. London: Deutsch, 1977.
A Bend in the River. London: Deutsch, 1979.
A Congo Diary. Los Angeles, CA: Sylvester & Orphanos, 1980.
Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey. London: Deutsch, 1981.
The Enigma of Arrival. London: Viking, 1987.
India: A Million Mutinies Now. London: Heinemann, 1990.
A Way in the World. London: Heinemann, 1994.
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples. 1998.
Reading and Writing: A Personal Account. 2000.
Half a life. London: Picador, 2001.
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