‘V.S. Naipaul is the world’s writer, a master of language and perception’ New York Times Book Review

V.S. Naipaul’s legendary command of broad comedy and acute social observation is on abundant display in these classic works of fiction – two novels and a collection of stories.

The Suffrage of Elvira is Naipaul’s hilarious take on an electoral campaign in the back country of Trinidad, where the candidates’ tactics include blatant vote-buying and supernatural sabotage. The eponymous protagonist of Mr Stone and the Knights Companion is an ageing Englishman of ponderously regular habits whose life is thrown into upheaval by a sudden marriage and an unanticipated professional advancement. And the stories in A Flag on the Island take us from a Chinese bakery in Trinidad to a rooming house in London. Unfailingly stylish, filled with intelligence and feeling, here is the work of a writer who can do just about anything that can be done with language.