A Way in the World

Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul intertwines memory and history to create an ambitious fictional archaeology of colonialism.Spanning continents and centuries and defying literary categories, A Way in the World tells intersecting stories whose protagonists include the disgraced and half-demented Sir Walter Raleigh who seeks El Dorado in the New World; the 19th century insurgent Francisco Miranda who becomes entangled in his own fantasies and borrowed ideas; and the doomed Blair, a present-day Caribbean revolutionary stranded in East Africa. Among these presences is a narrator who bears a telling resemblance to Naipaul himself: a Trinidadian writer of Indian ancestry and English residence boldly trying to come to terms with the mystery and transience that is his inheritance.ReviewPraise for V. S. Naipaul and A Way in the World:"Dickensian...a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life and work."—The New York Times"For more than 50 years, V. S. Naipaul has been an important voice with his keen, often painfully blunt insights into modern cultures and societies.... He has travelled and observed, producing a wealth of fiction and non-fiction about modern life that is as thought-provoking as it is engaging." —Edmonton Journal"For sheer abundance of talent there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V. S. Naipaul. He is the world's writer, a master of language and perception." —The New York Times Book Review"Naipaul more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer."—The Observer"It is Naipaul's uncanny ability to...uncover the raw wood beneath the highly polished veneers, that places his writing among the best in the English-speaking world." —Winnipeg Free PressAbout the AuthorV. S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then he has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River and A Turn in the South, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.