Naipaul is ultimately more cynical and derisive than he is revealing, and this book is a prime example. At best, there some kind of enchantment you experience when he lines the words up just right, but more often you wonder why he bothers at all since everything is so screwed.

Perhaps my discontent with this work has to do with my understanding of (or hope for) the human condition. This book allows little of that really, except for the peculiar speech included at the end where he weighs in on the "universal civilization" as it deems it, while never truly defining it. My interpretation is that this is 'Western civilisation' in its most tolerant of manifestations. What a wholly unsatisfying addendum, which raise more questions about the author's loyalty to American and British publishers, that it answers or postulates about just about anything. I suppose it doesn't help that in person he happens to be supremely disagreeable and arrogant and apparently believes that his work, as with all literature is "not for children" as he informed an initially eager audience of high-school students during a recent visit to his homeland, Trinidad and Tobago.

I read 7 essays.

Naipul es un navegante de la historia y la cultura del mundo.

I confess the only Naipaul work I had read was A house for Mr. Biswas.

I started this book (a collection of essays) by reading the essays on Africa. However, his essays on on India had me hooked. Lovely prose and very interesting observation on India during the late 60s and 70s. The observations are so symptomatic that are as true today as they were when Indira Gandhi split the congress.

He does paint India in a poor light. Specifically his commentary on Indian civilization.

Still, this collection are a must read.

Decades ago I was a member of the Book-of-the-Month Club. One month they featured V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas, and I bought it out of my usual insatiable curiosity for all things new and unknown. I no longer own the book nor remember many details about it, aside from my enjoyment of it, but I have never forgotten the title or the author. Mr. Naipul went on to write many other books, but I remember hearing about his "travel" books most.

At the last AAUW used book sale, I came across and bought his The Mystic Masseur. I thoroughly enjoyed this slim novel and afterwards remembered I had picked up from somewhere this book of essays. It was first published in 2002; the essays included were published from 1962-1991 and are written about places and countries with which I am, shamefully, not familiar. Not exactly current events. And yet. I was enthralled by this book and Mr. Naipul's writing. This is not a dull book of old politics and events. It reads like a novel thanks to Mr. Naipul's skill, interest, understanding, and truth-telling. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

One of the best things that happened to me in recent time, is stumbling upon this book.
Naipaul is complex, both as a writer and a traveller. He doesn't show you black and white but only shades of grey. The author's view, though controversial at times, is brutally honest and doesn't treat history with that "romantic" element. Be it the expedition of Colombus or the mindset of free India, he doesn't try to make it sound good when it actually wasn't. He doesn't give you conclusions, only perceptions. After finishing an essay, you got a lot to ponder about. The essays are raw, gritty and constructed with exquisite language and understanding unique to the author. On the whole, thanks to his unparalleled language skills, not only it imparts the insight of the author but also an undying enthusiasm to travel and experience the world outside.

Vintage Naipaul....The most brilliant writer of our times.

I give an excellent rating to this book for its language. Just like Naipaul's other works, this book is, too, in parts, quirky. The book has five essays. The first two essays 'The Worm in the Bud' and 'An English Way of Looking' are engaging. In the first one, he writes about writers from Trinidad, and their struggles, including his father's, with writing. The essay, in fact, traces the history of significant writers who came from that part of the world – those who became successful and known, and those who vanished. I liked reading about what he has to say about his father's work, and how that has shaped him. Since I have read letters between Naipaul and his father, I liked reading this essay.

The second essay is about his life in England and his friendships with editors, publishers and other writers. He writes with great care, concern, and honesty about the author Anthony Powell. The essay gives a peep into the nature of friendships and politics that prevails in the literary world. He also wrote in detail about his own grappling with words and deadlines, but once he established himself he gave up writing book reviews. It came as a pleasant surprise that Naipaul usually took a week to write a thousand-word book review.

The rest of the essays are on India. He writes about India, its culture, politicians, and his own relationship with India. Of course, the picture that emerges is a fascinating one no matter how much one dislikes some of the stuff Naipaul writes, he cannot be easily dismissed. He writes about India with great understanding. Many Indian people bash him for his views on India because they think that he panders to the western audience. There could be some truth in these accusations, however, there is a lot in his critique that is significant.

Naipaul writes effectively about caste and the immigrant experience, and how immigrants when living far away from their native lands turn reality into myths. Here he talks about his own family. For instance, when his family could travel back to India, his mother visited her village. She was hugely disappointed in them. The way this visit is described in the book makes it clear that both mother and son get disgusted by the dust-ridden Indian landscape, and the muddy tea the poor relatives offered his mother. The Brahmin relatives are looked upon as if they were untouchables. It is fascinating to see that Naipaul is harsh with almost every aspect of Indian life, he never gave up his caste. There is a lot in Brahmanism that he seems to admire: in fact, in the book he claims that almost all human nature can be expressed by the Hindu epics. He confesses that religion has a huge impact on him, and in very important ways, in a foreign land, his ancestors could maintain their sense of self by practicing caste and religious rituals.

Coming back to the experience of the mother rings perfectly true, but the conclusions drawn from the experience are not convincing. I have seen very poor people, especially the so-called upper castes, who are clean and extremely cultured. As I read him, I wondered Naipaul's own ancestors had survived outside India, in his own estimation, due to their religion and what they knew in terms of rituals, stories, and so forth. The cultural values were strong and remained a guiding force in the unfamiliar land. How come, then, those who stayed back in India, in their own world doing what they have always been doing for centuries, unfazed by conquests and colonialism, turned heathen.

There are several such contradictions I notice while reading Naipaul. It is for these contradictions that I read the amazing Naipaul.

Great book to give you a perpective on various parts of the world, in the recent past. I feel like I understand a bit about more about the world and neocolonialism after reading these essays. Also a great book to work on your vocab.... I had to look up so many words!!!!

A part of Naipaul's writing can be admired at any moment, without any hesitation! You will just love it. However, there is a part of his narrative that drags you, dumps you and drags you again - and that part, to be honest, is rough, versatile and something that compels you to ponder. It is available in his writing - fiction, non-fiction - each day!

I’m slowly working my way through Naipaul’s oeuvre, and having read A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mimic Men, and In a Free State, I felt it time to turn to his non-fiction, and this series of essays published in his later years seemed appropriate. Full disclosure: I found the book on sale at the local second-hand bookshop. 

The book is divided into three sections: India, Africa and its diaspora, and the Americas. I was grateful to discover in-depth examinations of political and historical circumstances of countries of which I’ve read little. For example, his choice to feature Grenada, Guyana, and Anguilla represents my first engagement with any analysis of their internal history and role in the broader world.

In fact, each essay was like this, in that he chose to deeply examine internal circumstances of a wide variety of countries and his impressions of them. Essays I particularly enjoyed include:

“In the Middle of the Journey” – in which his analysis of the India of the 1960s features a scathing critique of the colonised identifying so wholly with their coloniser. To-wit: “How strange to find, in free India, this attitude of the conqueror, this attitude of plundering…[which] is that of the immigrant colonial society.” Such a statement presents as if the lessons of India having been colonised were never adequately learned. It’s a topic I’m fascinated by.

“Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad: Peace and Power” – a fabulously detailed and sensational story of 1970s Trinidad. His attention to Michael X as a character empowered by his experiences in the UK serves as a model of the opposite to Sir V.S. Naipaul, who despite what criticisms may arise of his personal life and intimations toward women and members of other races, did not enact the same force of violence as Michael X and his followers did. This is not an apology for Naipaul’s personal failings; however, I found this essay to be the supreme highlight of the entire collection.

4 stars. After finishing this text, I took an hour and watched the BBC Documentary “The Trouble with Naipaul” (link below), which examined arguments for and against reading this divisive author, but that did not diminish his legacy as a superior craftsman of the written word. I firmly believe we can divorce the power of the writer from the failings of the man. In Naipaul’s case, this must be done to discover what we might learn from his rich engagement in criticising the colonising and colonised worlds. A rewarding read overall.

The Trouble with Naipaul
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000...

A collection of 21 essays, including:

~ New York with Norman Mailer (1969)
~ Columbus and Crusoe (1972)
~ The Overcrowded Barracoon (1973)
~ Steinbeck in Monterey (1972)
~ Argentina and the Ghost of Eva Peron (1972-1991)
~ New King of the Congo: Mobutu & Nihilism in Africa (1975)
~ Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad (1979)
~ Among the Republicans: An American Tribe (1980)
~ The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro (1984)

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V S Naipaul was controversial in his views of post colonial nations. He traveled widely in India, Africa and the Americas for this book and wrote what he saw in the 70’s and 80’s. His impressions were of intellectual paralysis and people struggling to maintain modern advances made by former European colonists. In each location he examines the realities on the ground and is unsparing in his criticism. Many of these essays were published in the NY Review of Books and New Yorker. It's good to have them under a single cover and they stand together as unified body of work.

India:
Naipaul paints portraits of Calcutta's anglicized Indian businessmen who call themselves Andy, Danny and Jimmy. Golfing after work they impose a westernized caste system in their lifestyles. He contrasts the religious follies of Vinoba Bhave and Vivekananda against the social transcendence of Gandhi, and sees the hoax of India as an inability to improve conditions, a reliance on magic and worship of a fabled past. He visits a raja in a rundown palace and follows a Rajasthan election between the Jan Sangh and Indira Gandhi parties. His later India trilogy books went into further depth.

Africa:
Naipaul covers the African diaspora on the Carribean islands of St. Kitts and Anguilla and a feud between local despots. Shipwrecked and isolated former British slave colonies go it alone. Belize is revisited, a ruin of empire where Mexico and Guatemala vie to repossess their former lands. Michael X, an emigre to England, evolves from pimp and drug dealer to founder of a Black Power movement in 1965. After jail time for inciting hatred he returns to Trinidad and is executed for racial murders. The Mauritius sugar cane island, Mobutu's Congo kingdom and the Ivory Coast get their just deserts.

Americas:
Naipaul also takes aim at the new continents. The avarice of Columbus is compared to the myth of Crusoe's desert island cannibals. An apologist for French Algeria doubles as an anthropologist of the Aztecs. Naipaul trails Norman Mailer on his quixotic campaign to be mayor of NYC in 1969 and attends Reagan's 1980 Dallas Republican convention where Eldridge Cleaver sells out to the establishment. He stays at Steinbeck's Cannery Row in 1970 and finds it reinvented as a schlocky tourist destination. Peron's Argentina is seen as an indigenous regression of 19th century European conquest.

As Pankaj Mishra notes in his introduction, Naipaul was twice displaced himself in the age of empire. Born in Trinidad as the grandson of an indentured laborer from India he won a scholarship to Oxford and the Nobel Prize. As a writer-in-exile, bearing the weight of lost glory and past tragedy, Naipaul had humor and compassion for his fellow colonial refugees. It has been said his prose is admirable but perspective skewed, yet he can be read differently. Although voiced in a critical language his insights are worthy to be heard. Flawed as a hero, he is a hero nonetheless.