Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, V.S. Naipaul is our most intelligent and unflinching observer of the collision between modern and traditional societies. His novels, essays, and reportage are distinguished by their wit, outrage, and compassion, and by a prophetic vision of individuals caught in the tectonic upheavals of history. Vintage Naipaul includes the prologue and first chapter of the novel A House for Mr. Biswas; a vignette from the novel Half a Life; “Jasmine” from The Overcrowded Barracoon; “Synthesis and Mimicry” from India: A Wounded Civilization; “A New King for the Congo: Mobutu and the Nihilism of Africa” from The Writer and the World; “Jack’s Garden” from his memoir The Enigma of Arrival; and the story “The Bomoh’s Son” from the collection Beyond Belief; and a vignette from the novel Half a Life.
