The Indian Trilogy

Book excerpt: AN AREA OF DARKNESS 'Brilliant ... tender, lyrical, explosive' Observer V.S. Naipaul was twenty-nine when he first visited India. This is his semi-autobiographical account-at once painful and hilarious, but always thoughtful and considered-a revelation both of the country and of himself. INDIA: A WOUNDED CIVILIZATION 'A devastating work, but proof that a novelist of Naipaul's stature can often define problems quicker and more effectively than a team of economists and other experts' The Times Prompted by the Emergency of 1975, Naipaul casts a more analytical eye, convinced that India, wounded by a thousand years of foreign rule, has not yet found an ideology of regeneration. INDIA: A MILLION MUTINIES NOW 'Indispensable for anyone who wants seriously to come to grips with the experience of India' New York Times Book Review It is twenty-six years since Naipaul's first trip to India. Taking an anti-clockwise journey around the metropolises-including Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Delhi-he focuses on the country's development since Independence. The author recedes, allowing Indians to tell the stories, and a dynamic oral history of the country emerges.