An Area of Darkness
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in An Area of Darkness: His Discovery of India for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'A masterpiece of travel-writing' Paul Theroux 'Brilliant' Observer
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
A luminous and challenging work of autobiographical travel writing.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
First Sentence
AS SOON AS our quarantine flag came down and the last of the barefooted, blue-uniformed policemen of the Bombay Port Health Authority had left the ship, Coelho the Goan came aboard and, luring me with a long beckoning finger into the saloon, whispered, 'You have any cheej?' Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
AS SOON AS our quarantine flag came down and the last of the barefooted, blue-uniformed policemen of the Bombay Port Health Authority had left the ship, Coelho the Goan came aboard and, luring me with a long beckoning finger into the saloon, whispered, 'You have any cheej?' Read the first page
Explore More
Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This is the first of three books Naipaul has written about India - this one covers his first trip in 1962. I felt it was very helpful in letting me come to terms with the less pleasing side of India that I encountered in the course of several fascinating (and often wonderful) trips there - the side of India proverbial with poverty, dirt, corruption and inefficiency, that is tragically a part of any visitor's journey there but tends in some guide books or travelogues to be pushed aside or down played. Perhaps it takes an (ethnic) Indian like Naipaul to be fearless about tackling this. His description of Kashmir was especially memorable. If you like this book, try his other two India books, describing later trips: *A Wounded Civilization* and *India*. While these books will not cater to Western daydreams of a "spiritual" India, they will help the detached reader understand a more complete India, and one without the spin-doctoring.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked this up out of curiosity and was astonished at the vividness of writing and perceptions. Normally, a travel book this old is simply too dated to be of relevance. Instead, in this book we are treated to a deep meditation on the country with Naipal's novelist's eye and his persepctive as one of the first great writers from the Third World. Indeed, if you know India, this is a travel book that predates touristic India, and so is an entry into history.
But there are so many images that stick in the mind, flashes of humor and melancholy. I will always remember the pilgrimage he went on to see the "miracle" of an ice formation that appeared every year in the shape of a hindu god, though not in that year; the troubled American girl, Larene, who married a local musician in a moment of passion and was now attempting to ditch him; and the retreat in Cashmere, where Naipal got an incompetent cook fired in a fit of rage that he later regretted.
Get it. One of the best travel books I ever read.
But there are so many images that stick in the mind, flashes of humor and melancholy. I will always remember the pilgrimage he went on to see the "miracle" of an ice formation that appeared every year in the shape of a hindu god, though not in that year; the troubled American girl, Larene, who married a local musician in a moment of passion and was now attempting to ditch him; and the retreat in Cashmere, where Naipal got an incompetent cook fired in a fit of rage that he later regretted.
Get it. One of the best travel books I ever read.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When V.S. Naipaul returned in the early 1960s to the country of his ancestors, India, he was brutally confronted with a paralyzing caste system, abject poverty, disastrous hygiene and sanitation, endemic corruption and absurd religious fervor.
The caste system
V.S. Naipaul illustrates profusely what a caste system really is. A caste is not a class, because a class system is a system of rewards. `Caste imprisons a man in his function. From this it follows, since there are no rewards, that duties and responsibilities become irrelevant to position.'
Caste also implies a brutal division of `labor' with at its centre the degradation of the latrine-cleaner. The main aim of the sweeper, however, is not to clean, but `to be' dirt.
By divorcing function from social obligation, caste becomes inefficient and destructive. Physical efforts (labor) are seen as degradation and have to be avoided. Caste lies at the heart of the Indian passion for symbolic actions: planting trees, but leaving the trees alone afterwards.
Poverty, the British
Poverty is not felt as an urge to anger or improving action, but as an exhaustible source of tears.
For V.S. Naipaul, India was (is still?) the world's greatest slum, with Kolkata as its nadir: filth, overpopulation and tainted money. It stands as an example of the total Indian tragedy and the terrible British failure. The British expressed their contempt for it and escaped back to England.
Religion
The religious doctrine was not as important as the forms it had bred. Religions was a spectacle (flagellations, ten thousand simultaneous prostrations), `a mixture of the gay, the penitential, the hysterical and, importantly, the absurd.'
The pilgrimage to the Cave of Amarnath with its massive ice phallus showed that `the generative force alone remained potent.'
Has India fundamentally changed since this disastrous report? Was the treatment of a former `untouchable' Prime Minister a sign on the wall?
Our world today needs more V.S. Naipauls, who do not deny what they see and who have a keen eye for crucial political, social and economic issues and psychological impacts.
This impressive in depth travel report should be a model for all those who want to learn to see.
Not to be missed.
I also highly recommend the movies by the great Indian director Shyam BENEGAL.
The caste system
V.S. Naipaul illustrates profusely what a caste system really is. A caste is not a class, because a class system is a system of rewards. `Caste imprisons a man in his function. From this it follows, since there are no rewards, that duties and responsibilities become irrelevant to position.'
Caste also implies a brutal division of `labor' with at its centre the degradation of the latrine-cleaner. The main aim of the sweeper, however, is not to clean, but `to be' dirt.
By divorcing function from social obligation, caste becomes inefficient and destructive. Physical efforts (labor) are seen as degradation and have to be avoided. Caste lies at the heart of the Indian passion for symbolic actions: planting trees, but leaving the trees alone afterwards.
Poverty, the British
Poverty is not felt as an urge to anger or improving action, but as an exhaustible source of tears.
For V.S. Naipaul, India was (is still?) the world's greatest slum, with Kolkata as its nadir: filth, overpopulation and tainted money. It stands as an example of the total Indian tragedy and the terrible British failure. The British expressed their contempt for it and escaped back to England.
Religion
The religious doctrine was not as important as the forms it had bred. Religions was a spectacle (flagellations, ten thousand simultaneous prostrations), `a mixture of the gay, the penitential, the hysterical and, importantly, the absurd.'
The pilgrimage to the Cave of Amarnath with its massive ice phallus showed that `the generative force alone remained potent.'
Has India fundamentally changed since this disastrous report? Was the treatment of a former `untouchable' Prime Minister a sign on the wall?
Our world today needs more V.S. Naipauls, who do not deny what they see and who have a keen eye for crucial political, social and economic issues and psychological impacts.
This impressive in depth travel report should be a model for all those who want to learn to see.
Not to be missed.
I also highly recommend the movies by the great Indian director Shyam BENEGAL.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
