An Area of Darkness, V. S. Naipaul
An Area of Darkness, V. S. Naipaul
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An Area of Darkness

Author: V. S. Naipaul

Narrator: Simon Vance

Unabridged: 10 hr 1 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/24/2021

Synopsis

A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India.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 humanity: 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.

About V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) was the author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. His honors include the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize, the Trinity Cross, and a knighthood for services to literature. He was named a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 and went to Oxford on a scholarship in 1950.

About Simon Vance

Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist’s very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Murtaza

This is the first book by Naipaul that has helped me understand why people disliked him so much. It's an insufferably arrogant account of a traveler through India who does not speak the language and has no meaningful understanding of its history. He goes purely by gut and what he produces is an asto......more

Goodreads review by Paul

O my God, did V S Naipaul get out of bed the wrong side every single day of his life? His Mr Grumpy routine gets so tiring you wish you could visit a poor woodworker in Delhi with him just so you could grab him and force his head into a vice and leave him there. ("Not letting you out till you cheer......more

Goodreads review by Bishan

If you are an Indian, this book is one of the most difficult things you can read. The difficulty arises from the undeniable truth in what Mr Naipaul writes. You resist that truth but are forced to acknowledge it as well. It is uncomfortable: that someone (an outsider?) can see that overwhelming real......more

Goodreads review by Sandhya

V. S Naipaul has always been a controversial figure. Whether it is for his rude behaviour towards fellow writers at conferences or his show of support for India's Hindutva ring, Bharatiya Janata Party or his admission in his autobiography that his callousness killed his wife, this Trinidadian author......more

Quotes

“[Naipaul’s] penetrating, opinionated travel writing…makes up a remarkable running commentary on the clash of civilizations.” New York Times

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