Mystic Masseur - Hardcover

Naipaul, V. S.

3.48

2,517 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 023395547X ISBN 13: 9780233955476

Publisher: Carlton Books Limited, 1965

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Former library book with plastic cover over DJ, has been read a lot. Fifth impression, 1978, of the 1957 first edition (stated inside)

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From the Inside Flap:

In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel-his first-V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. To understand a little better, one has to realize that in the 1940s masseurs were the island's medical practitioners of choice. As one character observes, "I know the sort of doctors they have in Trinidad. They think nothing of killing two, three people before breakfast."
Ganesh's ascent is variously aided and impeded by a Dickensian cast of rogues and eccentrics. There's his skeptical wife, Leela, whose schooling has made her excessively, fond. of; punctuation: marks!; and Leela's father, Ramlogan, a man of startling mood changes and an ever-ready cutlass. There's the aunt known as The Great Belcher. There are patients pursued by malign clouds or afflicted with an amorous fascination with bicycles. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

From the Back Cover:

“One of the few contemporary writers of whom we can speak in terms of greatness.”–Mel Gussow, Newsday

“For sheer abundance of talent, there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V. S. Naipaul.”–The New York Times Book Review

“Naipaul’s writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance.”–The Atlantic Monthly

“No one else around today...seems able to employ prose fiction so deeply as the very voice of exile.”–The New York Review of Books

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