An Area of Darkness

£7.99

A luminous and challenging work of autobiographical travel writing. In An Area of Darkness, V.S. Naipaul describes his encounter with a force in his life which shocked him into awareness of a need for self-examination and self-explanation. It is perhaps natural that his year-long sojourn in India should have provided such a shock. The experience was not a pleasant one, but the pain the author suffered was creative rather than numbing, and engendered a masterful work of literature that is by turns tender, lyrical, explosive and cruel.With spectacular narrative skill, Naipaul provides a revelation both of India and of himself: a displaced person who paradoxically possesses a stronger sense of place than almost anyone. He spins his web not so much to entrap his readers as to make them think for themselves.

V.S. Naipaul won the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature.