The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography Of V. S. Naipaul

Състояние: Много добро
Забележка: Леко захабен външен вид.
Издателство: Picador
Град на издаване: London
Наличност: singular
Ширина (мм): 155
Височина (мм): 230
Дебелина (мм): 42
Корици: Меки

Writing with unique access to his memories and his private papers, and with great love for his formidable body of work, Patrick French brings us unique and often surprising insights into the most enigmatic and compelling literary figure of the last fifty years.

Beginning in rich and evocative detail in Trinidad, where V. S. Naipaul was born into an East Indian family, he examines their early privations, Naipaul's first recollections, his life in the house on Luis Street, and his talent and fierce ambition at school, which won him a specially created scholarship to Oxford at the age of seventeen. French describes how, once in England, homesickness and depression struck with great force, and - with recourse to the many surviving letters between them - the ways in which Pat, later Naipaul's first wife, helped him to cope with his 'double exile'. Sticking together through the uncertainties of early life in London, theirs was a bond that endured even as Naipaul embarked on an affair that was to last for a quarter of a century.

Tracing the influences of his family - particularly his writerly father - his friends and his lovers on Naipaul's unpredictable temperament and extraordinary work, Patrick French evokes a man who has only ever been a writer, whose every impulse has led to the lifelong craft he has executed with unrivalled clarity and skill.

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About the Author

Patrick French (born 1966) is a British writer and historian, based in London. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature.

French is the author of several books including : Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer (1994), a biography of Francis Younghusband, The World Is What It Is (2008), an authorized biography of Nobel Laureate V. S Naipaul which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the United States of America, and India: A Portrait. An intimate biography of 1.2 billion people. (2010)

During the 1992 general election, French was a Green Party candidate for Parliament. He has sat on the executive committee of the Tibet Support Group UK, and was a founding member of the inter-governmental India-UK Round Table.