'Naipaul's writing is supple and fluid, meticulously crafted, adventurous and quick to surprise. And, as usual, there's the freshness and originality of his way of looking at things... a fine book by a fine man, and one to be read with great enjoyment: a book of style, sagacity and wit' Sunday Times 'A tissue of brilliantly recorded hearsay, of intense listening by a man with a remarkable ear' New York Times Review of Books

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including A Bend in the River, The Mystic Masseur and The Enigma of Arrival, and ten books of non-fiction including An Area of Darkness and Among the Believers. He has won the Booker Prize, the John Llewelyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the WH Smith award and in 1993 was awarded the first David Cohen British Literature Award. His latest novel, Half A Life, was published in September 2001. Shortly afterwards he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Wiltshire.