For the 'serious traveller', one who is fully engaged with the world, there can
be no single view. Our author's purpose, then, 'is not literary criticism or bio
graphy', but only to set out the writing and ways of seeing to which he was expo
sed. So here is colonial Trinidad (the early Derek Walcott and Naipaul's own fat
her); the culture of school (Flaubert and the classical world); England, where w
ith the help of friends the writer seeks to make his way; and, inevitably for a
colonial Indian, there is India, to be approached through the residue of Indian
culture and the scattered memories of nineteenth-century immigrants, leading to
a special understanding of Mahatma Gandhi.
Part meditation, part remembrance,
A Writer's People is a privileged insight, full of gentleness, humour and feeli
ng, into the mind of one of our greatest writers. 'Essential reading ...it offer
s the insights and observations -- on literature, history and cultural sensibili
ty -- of an honest and truly global thinker' Evening Standard 'The greatest writ
er now living in Britain. His courage in seeing and telling the truth represents
a level of high seriousness that has all but vanished' Sunday Times 'Naipaul ha
s a sharp visual sense ...And then there is his chiselled prose, elegant and eco
nomical: who, now living, writes as well as he?' Financial Times
