India (85 page)
Authors: V. S. Naipaul
V. S. N
AIPAUL
AMONG THE BELIEVERS
An Islamic Journey
On the basis of his seven-month journey across the Asian continent, V. S. Naipaul here explores the life, the culture, and the ferment inside four nations of Islam: Iran, where the hysteria and rage of revolution continues; Pakistan, tragically underdeveloped decades after its founding as a homeland for the Muslims of India; Malaysia, governed by Muslims but economically dominated by the Chinese who constitute half of its population; Indonesia, confused about both its Muslim and its national roots, and by the rule of four regimes (two foreign) in less than forty years. Naipaul depicts an Islamic world at odds with the modern world, fueled only by an implacable determination to believe.
Current Events/978-0-394-71195-9
AN AREA OF DARKNESS
A Discovery of India
An Area of Darkness
is V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker.
An Area of Darkness
also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.
Travel/Literature/978-0-375-70835-0
A BEND IN THE RIVER
In this incandescent novel V. S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man—an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.
Fiction/Literature/978-0-679-72202-1
ALSO AVAILABLE
Between Father and Son
, 978-0-375-70726-1
Beyond Belief
, 978-0-375-70648-6
The Enigma of Arrival
, 978-0-394-75760-5
Guerrillas
, 978-0-679-73174-0
Half a Life
, 978-0-375-70728-5
A House for Mr. Biswas
, 978-0-375-70716-2
In a Free State
, 978-1-4000-3055-2
Literary Occasions
, 978-1-4000-3130-6
The Loss of El Dorado
, 978-1-4000-3076-7
Magic Seeds
, 978-0-375-70727-8
The Middle Passage
, 978-0-375-70834-3
Miguel Street
, 978-0-375-71387-3
The Mimic Men
, 978-0-375-70717-9
The Mystic Masseur
, 978-0-375-70714-8
The Nightwatchman’s Occurrence Book
, 978-0-375-70833-6
A Turn in the South
, 978-0-679-72488-9
A Way in the World
, 978-0-679-76166-2
The Writer and the World
, 978-0-375-70730-8
A Writer’s People
, 978-0-375-70729-2
VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL
Available at your local bookstore, or visit
www.randomhouse.com