The World is What it is

This is the first major biography of V.S. Naipaul, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most compelling literary figures of the last fifty years. With great feeling for his formidable body of work, and exclusive access to his private papers and personal recollections, Patrick French has produced a lucid and astonishing account of this enigmatic genius: one which looks sensitively and unflinchingly at his relationships, his development as a writer and as a man, his outspokenness, his peerless creativity, and his extraordinary and enduring position both outside and at the very centre of literary culture. 'Its clarity, honesty, even-handedness, its panoramic range and close emotional focus, above all its virtually unprecedented access to the dark secret life at its heart, make it one of the most gripping biographies I've ever read' Hilary Spurling, Observer 'A brilliant biography: exemplary in its thoroughness, sympathetic but tough in tone ...Reading it I was enthralled and frequently amused (how incredibly funny Naipaul can be!)' Spectator 'A masterly performance ...If a better biography is published this year, I shall be astonished' Allan Massie, Literary Review 'Remarkable. This biography will change the way we read Naipaul's books' Craig Brown, Book of the Week, Mail on Sunday

ISBN 0330440098   DEWEY edition DC22 ISBN13 9780330440097 (What's this?)   Pages 450 Publisher Pan Macmillan   Published in London Imprint Picador   Height (mm) 197 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 130 Publication date 03 Apr 2009   Academic level General DEWEY 813

PRAISE FOR PATRICK FRENCH'S "THE WORLD IS WHAT IT IS" "A great writer requires a great biography, and a great biography must tell the truth. V.S. Naipaul wanted his monument built while he was still alive, and, sticking to his own ruthless literary code, he was willing to pay the full price....Now Naipaul has his monument, "The World Is What It Is" is fully worthy of its subject, with all the dramatic pacing, the insight and the pathos of a first-rate novel. It is a magnificent tribute to the painful and unlikely struggled by which the grandson of indentured Indian workers, born in the small island colony of Trinidad, made himself into the greatest English novelist of the past half century. It is also a portrait of the artist as a monster. How these two judgments can be simultaneously true is one of this book's central questions. Whether Naipaul himself understand the enormity of the story to which he contributed so much candor is another....rich narrative....impossible to put down....Pat's voice is faltering and uncertain where Naipaul's is relentlessly in command, but its small observations, evasions and sudden bolts of understanding haunt the reader up until her death of cancer, which gives this story its heartbreaking end."- George Packer, on the cover of the "New York Times Book Review""a prodigious achievement, a wonderful biography, a justification for the art of biography itself."- A. N. Wilson, "Times Literary Supplement" "astonishing (and astonishingly "authorized")....With the aid of this exhaustive and efficient biography, one can make some more-educated surmises about the connection between Naipaul's rigidly maintained exterior and the many layers ofinsecurity...that underlie it....shrewd and intelligent."- Christopher Hitchens, "The Atlantic" "I doubted whether an honest book could be written by anyone while Naipaul was still alive. I was wrong. The truth is not skimped in Patrick French's excellent book....The great merit of a superb biography, such as this one, is that it can deepen our understanding of the literary character by telling us more about its creator....French...gets it right."- Ian Buruma, "The New York Review of Books""extraordinary biography....French has handled an immense amount of materials with a deft hand, and the reader actually wishes he had extended the book's 487 pages of text and pursued his subject pas 1996....authorized but not compromised....It's hard to see how French could have been more objective if his subject had been dead for ten years....French is so thorough that it's likely no further biography of Naipaul, at least one covering the first sixty-odd years of his life, will ever be needed....French is very good on Naipaul's writing...."The World Is What It Is" adds depth and clarity to the discussion of Naipaul's work....French has met his own rigorous standards and, one feels, Sir Vidia's as well."- Allen Barra, "Bookforum" "one of the sprightliest, most gripping, most intellectually curious, and well, "funniest" biographies of a living writer...to come along in years....Mr. French is a relative rarity among biographers, a real writer, and at his best he sounds like a combination of that wily bohemian Geoff Dyer and that wittily matter-of-factual cyborg Michael Kinsley. Even the cameos in Mr. French's biography are crazily vivid....crafty and inquisitive book....Mr.French quickly and adroitly steps back to give us a wide-angled and morally complicated view....vivid prose....Mr. French writes with wit and feeling."- Dwight Garner, "The New York Times" "nuanced and generous....distinguished biography, one that aims to understand rather than simplistically condone or chastise....a superb, clear-eyed study, always sympathetic, balanced and thoughtful, as well as rich in what Joseph Conrad called 'the fascination of the abomination.'"- Michael Dirda, "Washington Post""extraordinary....Patrick French shrewdly...give[s] us an idea of...the world Naipaul had to join and beat....full o

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