Questions About An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India

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I have just started with this book, amidst I doubt how relevant are these observations to todays India. I chose to read this book in order to gain an idea of Indian society, which is a dynamic concept. So should I continue to read the other two books of this trilogy?

CT Considering that the latest book in the trilogy, A Million Mutinies Now, is from 1990, you're not going to get an accurate up-to-date picture of conte…moreConsidering that the latest book in the trilogy, A Million Mutinies Now, is from 1990, you're not going to get an accurate up-to-date picture of contemporary India from these books. And his attitudes about the subcontinent still anger a lot of people.

I think one of Naipaul's key points, though, is that any consideration of "modern" India has to take into account thousands of years of history leading up to this moment, and the erratic distrubution of change throughout the country. So his problems in getting a couple bottles of liquor into the country on arrival due to the byzantine bureaucracy are superficially irrelevant today, but the juxtaposition of physical history and social tradition with contemporary technology and cosmopolitan attitudes that he describes is not.

Plus after a while you can just laugh at him being an obvious curmudgeon and wonder at what his poor, rarely mentioned companion thought of any given situation.(less)

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