Literary Occasions: Essays - Hardcover

Naipaul, V.S.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375415173 ISBN 13: 9780375415173

Publisher: Knopf, 2003

Synopsis

From a master of the English language–winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature–a collection of essays about reading, writing, and identity.

In these eleven pieces–brought together for the first time–Naipaul charts more than half a century of personal inquiry into the mysteries of written expression and of fiction in particular. Here are his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first youthful efforts at writing them; the early glimmers and the evolution of ideas about the proper relation of particular literary forms to particular cultures and identities. Here, too, is Naipaul’s famous comment on his putative literary forebear Conrad, and a less familiar but no less intriguing preface to the only book Naipaul’s father ever published. Finally, in his celebrated Nobel Lecture, “Two Worlds,” Naipaul reflects on the full scope of his career, rounding off the volume as an intellectual autobiography. Sustained by extraordinary powers of expression and thought, Literary Occasions is a stirring contribution to the fading art of the critic, and a revelation as well of a life in letters, in its many exemplary instances.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Praise for V. S. Naipaul:
“The world’s writer, a master of language and perception.” -- The New York Times Book Review

“Naipaul is a master of English prose.” -- J. M. Coetzee

About the Author:

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0375415173
• ISBN 13: 9780375415173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224