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India Trilogy #1

An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India

v.s. naipaul

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The Nobel Prize-winning author’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India.

“Whatever his literary form, Naipaul is a master.” — The New York Review of Books

Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul’s strikingly original responses to India’s paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent.

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1964
Series
India Trilogy

This edition

Format
304 pages, Paperback
Published
July 9, 2002 by Vintage
ISBN
9780375708350
ASIN
0375708359
Language
English

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About the author

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v.s. naipaul

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V. S. Naipaul was a British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent known for his sharp, often controversial explorations of postcolonial societies, identity, and displacement. His works, which include both fiction and nonfiction, often depict themes of exile, cultural alienation, and the lingering effects of colonialism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father's struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.

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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
namx2
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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V.S. Naipaul alternatives essay writing and autobiography in a narrative which is to become the most intimate, critical and funny account of his journey to India. Beats Kerouac at his own game: on the road novel.
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JapaneseDuck
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Naipaul, with his tremendous will power wrote a book that still holds the most humbling and relevant truths about India. While it is not a pleasant read, it must have inspired many Indians to better themselves. Naipaul applied the stick. He felt Indians deserved no carrots.

For me the East had begun weeks before. Even in Greece I had felt Europe falling away. There was the East in the food, the emphasis on sweets, some of which I knew from my childhood; in the posters for Indian films with the actress Nargis, a favourite, I was told, of Greek audiences; in the instantaneous friendships, the invitations to meals and homes. Greece was a preparation for Egypt: Alexandria at sunset, a wide shining arc in the winter sea; beyond the breakwaters, a glimpse through fine rain of the ex-king’s white yacht; the ship’s engine cut off; then abruptly, as at a signal, a roar from the quay, shouting and quarrelling and jabbering from men in grubby jibbahs who in an instant overran the already crowded ship and kept on running through it. And it was clear that here, and not in Greece, the East began: in this chaos of uneconomical movement, the self-stimulated din, the sudden feeling of insecurity, the conviction that all men were not brothers and that luggage was in danger.

Nearly sixty years after this book was first published, India is still in a crisis situation. Naipaul's prediction that India is a disintegrating civilization might soon be fulfilled.
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chrissy_poo_too
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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AN AREA OF DARKNESS (Part-1: V.S. Naipaul’s The Indian Trilogy)
A litany of the ‘inexhaustible’ India…..A land of symbols, inaction and speeches
Writer’s block and ennui beguiled Naipaul to visit India in 1962 for a year; like a beast of prey in pursuit of its quarry, Naipaul pens a savage diatribe on India who had failed to live up to its billing. The travelogue reads like a severe scrutiny and critique of India as a fading and decaying mythical land, a land that still romances and ‘rhapsodizes’ the glories of its ancient past.
Like a cantankerous old relative he grumpily lands in Bombay where he performs a herculean task of getting a liquor transfer permit (read: prohibition-dry Bombay) from the paper-work obsessed offices. His short stay in Kashmir and Amarnath Yatra further enhances the acerbity of his narrative on India.
‘Eid- for the Kashmiri, the year’s solitary day of cleanliness, a penitential debauch of soap and water and itching new cloth.’
Naipaul views the cultural hybridization of India and England of the Raj as ‘a violation’, a hilarious mixture of costumes and the flawed use of the misunderstood English language. This land of ruins is further tagged as a colonial country that was mainly harvesting politicians and speeches. Unlike E.M Forster’s and Kipling’s India, viewed with a more forgiving lens, Naipaul’s India remained the land of his childhood, an area of darkness which he was unable to ‘penetrate’.
Naipaul, an impatient traveler, raises his word-whip on India-a behemoth of squalor and human decay. (I am obsessed with non-fiction reads on India and fancy the kaleidoscopic field of vision on India. Naipaul is a master of his craft and his take-down on India can be viewed in a more constructive fashion than taking a staunch jingoistic defense of denial of his remarks. )
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AmbiguousMonster
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book made me feel a tad uncomfortable. The author's experience in the newly independent India and how many of its citizens were still stuck in almost the middle ages, makes me realize how bad the situation was. But it also gives me hope when I see how far we have come as a nation. It would have been interesting to hear Naipauls own comparison of the India he visited in the 1960s and the India today.
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bakahaido
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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It felt like eating a beautifully prepared dish you despise.I had to pick up another book immediately after finishing the last page just to erase it from my mind.
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Lil-Bird
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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One of the funniest characters that Naipaul encounters during his first visit to India is a Sikh traveller who has spent some time in London and thus feels qualified to scorn everything in his own country. At one point he even declares himself "colour prejudiced". Yet the man is also a chauvinist and believes every other Indian race inferior. The reader, like Naipaul, finds the man's pronouncements funny, but is horrified to learn that no humour was intended.

Naipaul is brilliant at unravelling the contradictions of the places he visits. In India, he finds that the legacy of British rule is preserved not in the form of British institutions, but of colonial British institutions, with all their hierarchies. These in a way resonate with India's own hierarchies of caste and class. And the civil service and military become carriers of these bygone traditions which even within Britain's self-conception represented a rupture.

As always, there is too much attention to the grotesque. After speaking at length about Gandhi's obsession with India's filth, the book is replete with superfluous mentions of public defecation. There are also needless descriptions of people eating in ways that Naipaul finds distasteful. But as far as studying character and culture goes, Naipaul remains an unparalleled observer. His writings endure because the purity of his prose is matched by the lucidity of his vision. I don't care much fo Naipaul the man or his politics and prejudices. But as a writer, he stands in a league of his own.
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fabishi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A travelogue that displays some handsomely written passages that shows the author's self-assuredness in his craft, but is ultimately let down by long stretches of the author's muddled thoughts about India and his connection with the place.
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MADS_27
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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As a 2nd generation son of immigrants, I related very strongly to Naipaul’s descriptions. His experience is like mine, he grew up in a house filled with detritus from India. Then, as a young man he goes to India for the first time where he observes the servant culture and remnants of the British influence. He also goes on a Himalayan pilgrimage, rides the trains, and eventually visits his ancestral home.
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