India: A Wounded Civilization
Synopsis
The second book in V. S. Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy.
In 1964 V. S. Naipaul published An Area of Darkness, his semi-autobiographical account of a year in India. Two visits later, prompted by the Emergency of 1975, he came to write India: A Wounded Civilization. In this work he casts a more analytical eye than before over Indian attitudes, while recapitulating and further probing the feelings aroused in him by this vast, mysterious, and agonized country. What he saw and heard – evoked so superbly and vividly in these pages – reinforced in him a conviction that India, wounded by a thousand years of foreign rule, has not yet found an ideology of regeneration.
A work of fierce candour and precision, it is also a generous description of one man’s complicated relationship with the country of his ancestors.
‘A devastating work, but proof that a novelist of Naipaul’s stature can often define problems quicker and more effectively than a team of economists and other experts’ The Times
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Reviews
“It is a long and angry stare at the obvious; it is humbling . . . because it seems chasteningly right.”New Statesman, New Statesman
“A devastating work, but proof that a novelist of Naipaul’s stature can often define problems quicker and more effectively than a team of economists and other experts.”The Times, The Times
“Brilliant.”Spectator, Spectator
