false 3006513 4 <p>A luminous&#8212;often startling&#8212;life of the Nobel laureate, one of the most compelling literary figures of the past half century.<br><br>Beginning with a richly detailed portrait of V. S. Naipaul&#8217;s childhood in colonial Trinidad, Patrick French gives us the boy born to an Indian family, the displaced soul in a displaced community, who by dint of talent and ambition finds the only imaginable way out: a scholarship to Oxford at the age of seventeen. London in the 1950s offers hope and his first literary success, but homesickness and depression almost defeat Vidia, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an Englishwoman who will devote herself to his work and well-being. She will stand by him, sometimes tenuously, for more than four decades, even as Naipaul embarks on a twenty-four-year affair, which will awaken half-dead passions and feed perhaps his greatest wave of dizzying creativity. Amid this harrowing emotional life, French traces the course of the fierce visionary impulse underlying Naipaul&#8217;s singular power, a gift to produce masterpieces of fiction and nonfiction.<br><br>Informed by exclusive access to V. S. Naipaul&#8217;s private papers and personal recollections, and by great feeling for his formidable body of work, French&#8217;s revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius.</p> 3168011 4 11 2008 The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul total:85|5:23|4:39|3:16|2:6|1:1| 85 332 301 40 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 0 1 false Thu May 15 09:19:41 -0700 2008 Tue Jan 27 00:52:31 -0800 2009
by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Patrick French has just published an unflinchingly honest biography of Nobel prize-winning writer VS Naipaul, who comes across as unpleasant and stuffed with conceit. That, I guess, is true of many other authors, t...more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 4 0 false Tue Jan 27 17:32:15 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 17:45:21 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jan 26 17:01:31 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 17:20:07 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 4 0 false Mon Dec 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Jan 25 17:31:49 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 25 17:46:49 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 0 0 false Tue Jan 06 14:37:23 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 06 14:38:53 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 3 0 false Thu Dec 18 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 14:52:46 -0800 2008 Fri Dec 19 14:53:37 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Thu Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 14:30:17 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 22 14:49:57 -0700 2009
Here's how good Patrick French is: I knew exactly, exactly what was going to happen in the last twenty pages, because French had defined Naipaul's character so indelibly by that point...more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 3 0 false Mon Aug 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 19:14:45 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 10 19:16:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 4 0 false Thu Feb 05 10:02:39 -0800 2009 Thu Feb 05 10:02:39 -0800 2009 Reviewers were mostly astounded that such a good writer as V. S. Naipaul could be such a horrible person. Though he has always been known as prickly, critics seemed to compete for new adjectives to describe the man who emerges in this book. Michael Dirda's list: "whiney, narcissistic, insulting...

more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Sun Feb 08 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 23 14:22:39 -0800 2009 Sun Feb 08 13:11:58 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 2 0 true Thu May 14 16:24:41 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 11:29:13 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 16:24:41 -0700 2009
And what of Khomeini's fatwa on the author Salman Rushdie? "It's an extreme form of literary criticism."

With gems like these, it hard to decide if I will absolutely...more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 3 0 false Wed Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 11:46:57 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 27 11:51:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 3 0 false Thu Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Feb 14 22:47:31 -0800 2009 Sun Apr 12 13:13:42 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3136587 0330433504 9780330433501 1 1 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3136587.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 0 0 false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Sun Apr 19 21:12:01 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 19 21:16:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Sat Nov 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 03 10:36:39 -0800 2009 Sat Jan 03 10:42:59 -0800 2009
Check my A...more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 3 0 false Tue May 26 14:19:34 -0700 2009 Tue May 26 14:23:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Mon Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 08 12:27:56 -0800 2009 Thu Jan 08 12:28:29 -0800 2009 more...]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Wed Jan 14 05:20:24 -0800 2009 Wed Jan 14 05:24:27 -0800 2009 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 5 0 false Wed Mar 25 07:15:51 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 25 07:16:52 -0700 2009 I have ever read. His childhood days in Trinidad are chock
full of those details - His father was a great writing teacher!]]> 3006513 1400044057 9781400044054 84 39 3.91 http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3006513.The_World_Is_What_It_Is_The_Authorized_Biography_of_V_S_Naipaul 4 0 false Tue Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Dec 04 08:02:37 -0800 2008 Fri Oct 09 06:16:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=3006513