King shows how Naipaul modified Western and Indian literary traditions for the West Indies and then the wider world to become an international writer whose subject matter includes the Caribbean, England, India, Africa, the United States, Argentina, and contemporary Islam.

Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of V.

Preface
Introduction
Miguel Street, The Mystic Masseur, and The Suffrage of Elvira
A House for Mr Biswas and The Middle Passage
Mr Stone and the Knights Companion and An Area of Darkness
A Flag on the Island, The Mimic Men, and The Loss of El Dorado
In a Free State
The Overcrowded Baracoon, 'Michael X', Guerrillas and India: A Wounded Civilization
'A New King for the Congo' and A Bend in the River
Finding the Centre, The Enigma of Arrival, A Turn in the South, and India: A Million Mutinies
A Way in the World
Among the Believers, 'Our Universal Civilization' and Beyond Belief
'Two Worlds', Reading & Writing and Half a Life
Naipaul's Critics and postcolonialism
Appendix A: Naipaul's Family, A House for Mr Biswas and The Mimic Men
Appendix B: Naipaul, Trinidad, Guyana and Africa
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index.

V. S. Naipaul is a reader-friendly introduction to the writing of one of the most influential contemporary authors and the 2001 Nobel laureate in Literature. Bruce King provides a novel by novel analysis of the fiction with attention to structure, significance, and Naipaul's development as a writer, while setting the texts in their autobiographical. philosophical, social, political, colonial and postcolonial contexts. King shows how Naipaul modified Western and Indian literary traditions for the West Indies and then the wider world to become an international writer whose subject matter includes the Caribbean, England, India, Africa, the United States, Argentina, and contemporary Islam.

Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition of V. S. Naipaul now includes an expanded Introduction, and discussion of his most recent novels A Way in the World and Half a Life, his Nobel Lecture, Naipaul's writings on Islam, and a survey of the main criticism by other writers and postcolonial theorists.

Review of the first edition: 'The introduction to this volume is perhaps the best 15-page essay on Naipaul and his art; and the subsequent eight chapters are written with the authority that King is known to possess on post-colonial literature and in a style that is both crisp and admirably textured. Apart from the deft synopses of the plots of the works under discussion, the insightful and analytical evaluations that are presented, one distinct asset of this study is the first-hand acquaintance that the author has with the West Indies, India, and the other areas that Naipaul himself writes about...No beginning student should fail to read this work: no scholar will want to miss it.' - A. L. McLeod, Choice