Description
Book SynopsisSanjay Krishnan rereads V. S. Naipaul’s work to offer new perspectives on his achievements, shortcomings, trajectory, and complicated legacy. While recognizing the flaws and prejudices that shaped and limited Naipaul’s life and art, this book challenges the binaries that have restricted discussions of his writing.
Trade ReviewIn
V. S. Naipaul's Journeys, Sanjay Krishnan argues that Naipaul should be understood not as a reactionary critic of postcolonial cultures, but as someone who reported on them from the inside. Krishnan’s conclusions will be debated for a while to come, but his rigorous engagement with Naipaul’s
oeuvre will reanimate the author for the next generation of critics. -- Suvir Kaul, author of
Of Gardens and Graves: Kashmir, Poetry, PoliticsKrishnan deftly navigates the ideological maelstrom that swirls around Naipaul’s reputation to deliver a fully grounded reappraisal of the relationship between the author’s work, his biography, and his political moment. This study sets new parameters for evaluating Naipaul's literary legacy. -- Rhonda Cobham-Sander, author of
I and I: Epitaphs for the Self in the Work of V. S. Naipaul, Kamau Brathwaite, and Derek WalcottDrawing heavily on archival materials made available only recently,
V. S. Naipaul's Journeys: From Periphery to Center offers a defense and rereading of Naipaul by substantially reframing the objectives of his writing. Naipaul's work is unlike that of other postcolonial writers, contends Krishnan, in avoiding both easy position taking and the consolations of identity. Accessing Naipaul’s “ways of seeing,” Krishnan gives us a new, self-subverting Naipaul for the twenty-first century. -- Timothy Bewes, author of
The Event of Postcolonial ShameV. S. Naipaul's Journeys is an immensely valuable contribution. It is one of the best synthetic treatments of Naipaul's work available. It deftly blends a discussion of Naipaul's various journeys with Naipaul's own journey as a writer. It refocuses our attention on Naipaul's texts in order to reveal the development of his thinking. -- Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Ashoka University
Krishnan’s jargon-free study will prove invaluable to serious readers and Naipaul scholars alike. * Publishers Weekly *
Krishnan suggests that Naipaul’s ambiguous ironies mean he can never be read as simply for or against the colonized. What is uniquely insightful about Naipaul’s work is, this book argues, intimately connected to what is most problematic about it. * Times Literary Supplement *
A bold and comprehensive reading of the controversial writer...highly recommended. * Choice *
Krishnan argues persuasively that the way Naipaul used his own life story and experiences, including his interactions with the people he met on his travels, enabled him to create 'an original form of postcolonial writing'…the importance of his nuanced approach to Naipaul’s life and work cannot be overstated. -- Gillian Dooley * Transnational Literature *
In demonstrating how Naipaul’s work attends to multiple viewpoints and undoes the search for a master narrative about the postcolonial Caribbean,
V. S. Naipaul's Journeys contributes a comprehensive, meticulously researched, and insightful new study of a life and a literary corpus. -- Sarah Jilani, University of London * Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry *
In Sanjay Krishnan’s excellent study...we follow two parallel but counter-directional trajectories: that of the writer’s life—‘from periphery to centre’, as the book’s subtitle has it—and that of the work—which took the writer back from the imperial centre of the world to the peripheral societies that he was perpetually drawn to. -- Vineet Gill * Literary Activism *
Table of ContentsAbbreviations
Introduction
I. Early Writings: 1955–19611. Memories of Underdevelopment:
Miguel Street; The Middle Passage2. Self and Society:
The Suffrage of Elvira; A House for Mr BiswasII. The Middle Period: 1962–19803. Historical Identities:
The Middle Passage; An Area of Darkness 4. Fantasy and Derangement
: The Loss of El Dorado; India: A Wounded Civilization; “Michael X and the Killings in Trinidad”
5. Ambiguous Freedom: “In a Free State”
6. Truth and Lie:
A Bend in the RiverIII. Late Works: 1981–20107. Productive Deformation:
The Enigma of Arrival8. Landscapes of the Mind:
India: A Million Mutinies Now 9. Conversations with the Faithful:
Among the Believers; Beyond Belief10. Concluding Reflections:
Half a Life; Magic Seeds; The Masque of AfricaAcknowledgments
Notes
Index
