Beyond Belief - Hardcover

Naipaul, V.S.:

3.8

774 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316643610 ISBN 13: 9780316643610

Publisher: Little, Brown & Co., 1998

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Revisiting Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia - the countries he visited for "Among the Believers" (1981), Naipaul reviews his impressions of the Islamic world. He explores the life and culture, and the current ferment which exists inside the nations of Islam.

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About the Author:

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1922, and came to England on a scholarship in 1949. He studied at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954.

Review:

'He remains our most exhilarating explorer, with a corpus of travel writing which now surpasses that of D.H. Lawrence or Graham Greene' MARTIN AMIS 'One of the greatest living writers in the English language' ELIZABETH HARDWICK 'Naipaul writes at his precise, observational best ... brilliant' OBSERVER 'Jewel-like individual profiles are set in a filigree-work of acute physical, cultural, historical and psychological detail' FINANCIAL TIMES 'With the publication of Paul Theroux's devastating memoir of his broken friendship with V.S. Naipaul, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Naipaul's reputation has been seriously revised in recent years. His early, lyrical novels like A House for Mr. Biswas quickly gave way to a darker, increasingly pessimistic and conservative vision of postcolonial chaos and cultural dislocation, reflected in novels like Guerillas and Naipaul's early travel books, such as India: A Wounded Civilisation. One of the problems with dismissing Naipaul as a patrician cultural mandarin is that he tends to tussle with uncomfortable issues which lesser writers either avoid or romanticise. It is this desire to confront painful questions about religion, belief and belonging which characterises Naipaul's travel writing, and was a particular feature of his highly acclaimed study Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981), which chronicled his travels and observations through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples should be read as a sequel to Among the Believers, as it relates the story of Naipaul's five-month journey to the countries he visited, and often the people he interviewed, nearly 20 years earlier. Beyond Belief is a fascinating, unrelenting story of Naipaul's travels through countries which have been subject to what Naipaul calls Islamic "conversion", and the people he encounters and their complex, problematic relations with their faith. Written with Naipaul's usual precision and elegance, Beyond Belief is a controversial and uncompromising read, which has been angrily denounced by the Muslim community. However, it is an excellent antidote to so much current travel writing which uncritically reproduces myths of the exotic orient, and should be read by anyone who wants to begin to travel throughout the non-Arabic Muslim world.' - Jerry Brotton, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

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