i will now live in eternal fear of never seeing with as much clarity nor writing with as much honesty as naipaul does. i will also live in eternal fear of turning out as faintly racist, constantly antisocial, and generally grumpy as he is in this book.

also also i wonder if the only reason i think he's a little prejudiced is bc he's critiquing india - i don't know if i would ask him to change anything abt this book? this is what he truly believes, and it seems to come from a place of dislocation and love more than one of a hate or malice above his usual ambient hate and malice

also also also also this has ruined the word oblong for me

After reading so much of his later stuff, it's a relief to turn to his earlier work, when he was funnier, more enthusiastic and more expansive. The writing and the thinking aren't as tightly controlled, which risks melodrama. I was surprised when Naipaul visited his ancestral village and found out they were indeed Brahmin, as I had been sure that his grandparents had switched caste somewhere on their way to Trinidad.

There's a hysteria at the edges of this book, a barely-contained shock at the squalor, the hypocrisy, and the blank idiocy he encounters, but this is still (he was only thirty when he wrote this) somewhat balanced by his Mr. Biswas style affection for the little canoe-paddlers of the world.

"The stupefaction of peoples is one of our mysteries" writes Naipaul, and that's the phrase and the question that sticks with you after the book is done.

a brutal criticism of India. probably very true too at the same time... the first time i've been exposed to Naipaul's opinions and i'm not sure i liked it all. in the end when he visits his grandfather's village, Naipaul sounds very like the Indian he has been loathing throughout the book. he has been very honest to say the least

While I continue to believe that travel writing is the lowest form of literature (ie, what the pun is to humor, according to Schopenhauer), this was very good. I like that Naipaul is analyzes himself as much as India.

Reading the reviews i feel sorry to have bought this book in the first place. I read one other book by him "A bend in the river" which i liked very much. Now i'll see how i'll feel about this one. To be continued...
Sofar, I find it very interesting. The writer, who, as an Indian is distinctive in his country of birth, Trinidad, as well as he is distinctive in London, where he lives next, finds to his surprise that he is one of the crowd in India, where he has never been before. Quite the opposite experience of refugees or immigrants who feel out of place in their new country. For him India has always been an area of darkness.
The book starts with a funny introduction, the second antopological story is about how the cast system not only divides people, but also shapes them and their career. According to Naipaul some keep sleeping on their cardboard in the street, or work from their booth, even when they are financially very succesful. He mentions the problems of Indians that have studied abroad: they have difficulties adapting to the rigid system in which people only do the one thing that they always do; sweeping the floor, not washing it, writing shorthand but the typing is done by someone else. And how they can't find a wife because they don't have a car. I guess and hope this is exaggerated, but interesting to read.
Then comes a more specific story about his (and his wife, but she's a gost) stay with a woman who rents out her first floor without her husband knowing it. And that's the start of a travel book. Which is ok, but nothing special. That's where my interest faltered and why this books gets 3 stars.

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I read this while I visited India, and read about the Bhagirath only a few days after experiencing it in Delhi. The book is realistic but sympathetic. Naipaul sought to explore his roots, and warns anyone undertaking such a venture that roots, by their nature, grow in a particular environment. What is holy at the centre (bathing in the Ganges, rotted fish in Norway or Vegemite in Australia) may be disgusting to the naïve objectivity of the outsider.

“It is possible to find the India that appears not to have changed since Mogul times but has, profoundly; it is until, sometimes Ektha dismay, sometimes with impatience, one realized that complete communication is not possible, that a gift of Indian retreat. Both the negative and positive principles have been diluted; one balanced the other. The penetration was not complete; the attempt at conversion was abandoned. India’s strength, her ability to endure, came from the negative principle, her unexamined sense of continuity. It is a principle which, once diluted, Lowe’s its virtue. In the concept of Indianness the sense of continuity was bound to be lost. The creative urge failed. Instead of continuity we have the static. It is there in the ‘ancient culture’ architecture; it is there in the much bewailed loss of drive, which is psychological more than politics and economic. It is there in the political gossip of Bunty. It is there in the dead horses and immobile chariot of the Kurukshetra temple. Shiva has ceased to dance.”

Written during the demoralizing conflict with China in 1962, this is the first volume of V S Naipaul's trilogy on India and his second major work of non-fiction. Interestingly, it was banned on the subcontinent for a 'negative portrayal of India and its people', earning the special distinction of a bad book review from a sovereign nation. In this travelogue Naipaul turns his gaze on a country he sees wallowing in squalor and split by caste divisions. He is unsparingly critical in his initial assessment.

Although it presents an unflattering portrait of his ancestral homeland, this may be the best of the three works. His approach to the genre seems to still be under development. The style differs from his later trips, which paint a vast panorama through extensive interviews. Instead this is a powerful series of personal narratives, culled from a year of travel. Naipaul is at the center of the story told in this book. There is a dark humor in his early voice, and a poetry that would later to be lost.

If you didn't know Naipaul was Indian (or even Trinidadian) you might mistake him for upper class British. He went to Oxford and lived in London, and he peers down upon the natives he meets in the former colonies. It's not always certain that the comical results are intentional. Knowing Naipaul from his other work, he is likely quite serious in his outlook. En route to Bombay he delivers scathing comments on Egypt, Arabia and Pakistan, setting an acerbic tone for encounters to come.

Once in India, Naipaul embarks on a wide ranging cultural journey. Memories of his youth in Trinidad mingle with vignettes about bureaucrats, anglophiles, noveau riche, avante garde, poseurs and expatriates. Naipaul finds fear and contempt in the urban degradation and rural poverty. He describes the professional beggars, the sidewalk sleepers, outdoor defecators, holy fakirs, work shirkers and crooked merchants. How these threads are tied together is a mystery only Naipaul can unravel.

Leaving Bombay, Naipaul visits Delhi. A stay with a wealthy housewife is the beginning of a short story. A sojourn on a Kashmir houseboat becomes a novella. A pilgrimage to the Himalayas begets a tale of adventure, a side trip to Simla bequeaths an essay on Kipling and Forster. Naipaul moves about a fabled countryside and revisits the literary landscape of his imaginary India. An awareness is awakened; he may never return to his lost homeland.

At the end of his travels, Naipaul visits the Brahmin village his grandfather left behind more than sixty years before. In their appearance he recognizes the faces of family from his childhood past. We are returned to the first chapter on his early life. In this book ordinary words and acts have been transformed into literary catharsis. Not content to examine the lives of others, his vision is turned within. One thing is certain, that Naipaul could write.

یک عصر زمستان 1984، همکارم یانس یا جانس هلندی، با کتابی آمد و سفارش کرد که این را حتمن بخوان. نه کتاب را می شناختم و نه نویسنده اش را؛ کتابی از نایپل که چند سال بعد، احمد میرعلایی آن را به فارسی برگرداند؛ "هند، تمدن مجروح". نویسنده هندی، زاده و بزرگ شده ی ترینیداد! جالب بود اما برای شناختن و نظر دادن در مورد اثر، باید دست کم کتابی دیگر از نویسنده می خواندم. "جایی از تاریکی" یا "منطقه ای از تاریکی" که یک دهه قبل از "تمدن زخمی" نوشته شده بود، لایتچسبک بنظرم آمد! و از آن پس تا همین جا، نتوانسته ام به اندازه ی یک فنجان قهوه از این آقای نایپاول یا نایپول لذت ببرم. به ویژه وقتی اثر دیگر او در مورد اسلام و انقلاب ایران؛ among the believers: an islamic journey ، منتشر شد، که برای نوشتنش سفری به ولایت ما داشته، یکی دو روزی هم در شهر ما با احمد میرعلایی (مترجم "هند، تمدنی مجروح") محشور بوده، با مسلمانان هند و پاکستان سر و کله زده و...

I chose this work from a list of the "10 Best Travel Books of All Time," and perhaps the heightened anticipation ruined my enjoyment. I found Naipaul -- with a few notable exceptions and scenes -- to be rather tedious and often confusing (I almost called the writing "sloppy," but maybe the author's intent was to be "artistic"). A cover blurb states that no other book comes closer to "capturing the whole crazy spectrum" of India. I would prefer to keep looking.

The story is a semi-autobiographical description given by Naipaul of a year he spent in India in 1964. The opening section entitled ‘Travellers Prelude’ deals with the difficulties surrounding bureaucracy in the country. Naipaul speaks of how he made countless complex efforts to recover alcohol that was confiscated from him.

The book is divided into three parts.

*Part One is entitled ‘A Resting Place for the Imagination’. He speaks about his ancestors coming to the West Indies from India as indentured labourers. He also deals with his primary experiences on the issue of race, of Muslims and Hindus.

Naipaul was born an unbeliever. He grew up in a conventional Hindu family.

In India, he elucidates how caste comes to mean the atrocious division of labour and this was a disagreeable concept. While he was an unbeliever he was still saddened at the putrefication of older customs and rituals. Naipaul talks about deficiency in India and how it is one of the poorest countries in the world.

When he moves to London he finds himself as one more face in the midst of Industrialized England.

Naipaul speaks about the Indian English mimicry and how this is just like daydream. He goes on to speak about the custom of defecating everywhere and how they refuse to acknowledge this fact. The approach to many villages is not a pleasant experience therefore.

Naipaul speaks about Mahatma Gandhi and how he was able to look at India squarely and see its problems in a totally objective manner.

*Part Two opens with the image of Doll’s House on the Dal Lake. This is in fact a hotel called Hotel Liward, which is situated in Kashmir.

He speaks about his relationships with the various people who worked in the hotel and the ensuing conflicts, which occurred. We learn about the function of the Indian Civil Service. He is encouraged to join a pilgrimage to the Cave of Amarnath the Eternal Lord, ninety miles north of Srinagar.

He speaks about his joy and that of the other pilgrims as they climb the Himalayas and try to get inside the cave. Even though they are on a pilgrimage, Naipaul states low as soon as they get inside the cave it is like an archetypal Indian bazaar. Naipaul recounts many anecdotes among them, one about a young couple called Rafiq and Laraine, Rafiq is a poor musician.

They spend a good deal of time fighting but in due course they get married. They split up however as she is incapable to bear the poverty in India. She returns to America.

*Part Three is entitled ‘Fantasy and Ruins’. This section deals with how the British possessed the country completely.

He speaks about the English of the Raj — how they swaggered and had mannerisms and spoke a jargon. He mentions Kipling and how Kipling is a good chronicler of Anglo-India. He then talks about how the Taj Mahal is a great building without a function.

Naipaul moves on to speak about writers and how Indian attempts at the novel reveal the Indian confusion further. He recounts his experiences of the Indian railways and how he befriended a Sikh while travelling by train in the south of India. He comes to the conclusion, however, that India for him remains an area of darkness.

He has learned over the years his separateness, his contentment with being a colonial without a past and without ancestors.

At the wrapping up of the novel he tells us about his encounter with an emaciated man called Ramachandra. The man wants to start litigation and get some land, which previously belonged to Naipaul’s grandfather, Naipaul is disgusted at the incident and leaves in a mood of self-reproach.

He talks about his flight home and how it was made up of apprehension and annoyance.

He admits that the journey to India should not have been made as it broke his life in two.

Disappointing as well as engrossing!!