The master of English prose, Sir VS Naipaul, who is often hailed as the greatest living English writer tells about how he first had the inspiration he would become a writer, how he first started to substantiate his dream of becoming 'famous' through writing, and how he gathered his materials. The writer provides a rare vista through which any Naipaul-fan, or for that matter literature lover, can get to understand how this language magician emerged as a steadfast star in the literary universe.

The flow of the prose is what makes Naipaul irresistible as a writer, but his wit and intellect are all the more irresistible. The preface he wrote for his father's collection of his stories is intensely moving and nostalgic.
Reading this book of his, I understood how this literary giant made to the acme without being perturbed.

Excellent Naipaul but I found quite a bit of repetition in these essays that probably didn't render the author a service.

It was alright.

Meh, what was this. Some forewords to other stuff. Appropriate academic or fanboy reading: it left me cold.

Redundant and at the same time over analytical.
Best chapter-The last of Aryans.(That should be in school syllabus)

El libro es una recolección de varios ensayos, que desarrollan principalmente los relatos y percepciones sobre su camino como escritor y nos introduce en la búsqueda de lo que muchos llaman el "gran tema" en su literatura.
Y nos muestra sus primeros acercamientos al oficio, a través de la figura de su padre: su principal mentor en el arte de escribir. .
Algo que me dejó reflexionando, es que para #Naipaul «Todo gran escritor es producto de una serie de circunstancias especiales».
Se sentía lejano a toda la 'alta' literatura, siempre establecida en sociedades ordenadas, con historia milenaria. Pero lo que en un momento pensó como obstáculo, era en realidad esa cualidad especial: Reconoce los primeros hilos de su gran tema en un viaje a Londres, al escribir sobre sus raíces, su herencia cultural y su pueblo: Chaguanas, en Trinidad y Tobago poblado mayormente por inmigrantes provenientes de la India, en un lugar y cultura de la que nadie nunca había escrito.
Así comienza a explorar en estilos: investiga, viaja, recopila y descubre que tiene una mirada privilegiada de un lugar desconocido.

En cuanto a la edición, es de considerar que al tratarse de una recolección de ensayos, el libro como producto final redunda en temas y hechos que Naipaul relata, pudo haber resultado mejor en la elección de los ensayos. Cierra con su discurso al recibir el Nobel, sumamente inspirador y lleno de referencias.

Este conjunto de memorias refleja a un escritor siempre férreo a la búsqueda de una expresión singular, con esa nueva mirada que se refleja en técnicas literarias, en el "gran tema" o en el tono de escritura.

Sir Vidia Naipaul shares a very honest approach of his background Trinidad and reports on the efforts for discovering the real motivation for a mysterious wish of becoming a writer. For prospecting writers, enthusiasts of Naipaul in general and those who read "The Writer and the World" essays, this will be delightful reading indeed

An real event of literary description... slow but phenomenal, boring but substantial....

Una lectura estupenda para cualquier interesado en el tema. Muy accesible

A series of essays primarily interesting as offering a formal autobiography of the author’s Trinidadian background. I’m doing a Naipaul re-read, so far it’s been fruitful.

This book is yet another case of a collection of scraps that only ultra-famous writers get to turn into a proper book (although I suspect often this is their publishers’ initiative). Most essays are repetitive, recycling same material – the story of Naipaul’s failed father, the story of Naipaul’s becoming a writer, the story of the unique place he came from – the colonial island Trinidad, the story of Naipaul’s complex relationship with India. In themselves, all these stories are interesting, even if I didn’t like the author’s voice. The latter didn’t come to me as a surprise as I tried a novel of his once and there too the voice was off-putting – cold, self-satisfied and earnest. The earnestness is interesting as throughout several essays Naipaul keeps complimenting himself by saying how good he is at writing comedy. Maybe he is, but I doubt this after reading this book. Plus, what genuinely funny writer will call his vocation a ‘writing career’?
Having said all this, I’m glad I read this book. There are some lines of wisdom there about human condition and about literature, and I learned many interesting things about the history and culture of Caribbean islands and about India. I also enjoyed Naipaul’s literary criticism – these essays where he discusses others’ books were my favorites even if often I struggled to understand some of his more abstract statements.

V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. In 2003, he published this collection of essays, which focus on the process by which he became a writer.

The essays are very well written, as one would expect. They reveal an unusual man: one who claims he wanted to be a writer from the time he was a small child, though he did not try to actually write anything when he was young. The author also claims he was not much of a reader when he was in school, and had no affinity for or understanding of the literature he did read.

Naipaul also takes pains to separate himself from virtually all of the rest of the world. Naipaul grew up on the Caribbean island of Trinidad when it was a British colony. He claims he felt cut off from his Indian heritage by distance, isolated from the rest of the colonial population by race and culture, and cut off from Englishmen, who benefited from a sophisticated "metropolitan" culture which he could neither share in nor understand.

Naipaul accentuates his self-proclaimed isolation by denigrating others, sometimes in pointed and ungenerous terms. In one essay, he mocks the pretentiousness and poor English grammar of a fellow Bengali he met on an airline flight in Europe. In another, he describes Indian Muslims as violent criminals and overlords, though this essay was published many years before 9-11 made this hostility fashionable. And of course, white Britons and Americans come in for more than their share of criticism.

Naipaul seems to imply that his literary talent almost was an accident of nature, which did not begin to manifest itself until relatively late, though he worked hard at honing that talent when he finally began writing after college. Naipaul may simply be overly modest in depicting himself this way. This description may also give hope to persons who, like Naipaul in his younger years, had an unformed ambition to become a writer, but have not yet gotten started.

One the whole, these essays are clearly and lucidly written, and deserve the high rating I have given them. At the same time, there is little in this book showing the depth that one would expect of a Nobel laureate. Whether Naipaul possesses that depth, or won more because he was perceived to be the politically correct choice, still remains to be determined after one has read this book.