The Reading Warehouse

Born in Trinidad of Indian descent, a resident of England for his entire adult life, and a prodigious traveler, V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of fitting one civilization to another. Here, he takes us into his sometimes inadvertent process of creative and intellectual assimilation, which has shaped both his writing and his life.

In a probing narrative that is part meditation and part remembrance, Naipaul discusses the writers to whom he was exposed early on and his first encounters with literary culture. He looks at what we have retained and what we have forgotten of the classical world, and he illuminates the ways in which Indian writers such as Gandhi and Nehru both reveal and conceal themselves and their nation. Full of humor and privileged insight, this is an eloquent, intimate exploration into the configuration of a writer's mind.

V. S. Naipaul (1932-2018) was the author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. His honors include the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize, the Trinity Cross, and a knighthood for services to literature. He was named a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 and went to Oxford on a scholarship in 1950.

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist's very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.