{"product_id":"a-way-in-the-world-v-s-naipaul-9780679761662","title":"A Way in the World","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe Nobel Prize-winning author--and \"one of literature's great travelers\" (\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e)--spans continents and centuries to create what is at once an autobiography and a fictional archaeology of colonialism. \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\"Dickensian ... a brilliant new prism through which to view (Naipaul's) life and work.\"--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003e\"Most of us know the parents or grandparents we come from. But we go back and back, forever: we go back all of us to the very beginning: in our blood and bone and brain we carry the memories of thousands of beings.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo observes the opening narrator of A Way in the World, and it is this conundrum--that the bulk of our inheritance must remain beyond our grasp--which suffuses this extraordinary work of fiction. Returning to the autobiographical mode he so brilliantly explored in \u003ci\u003eThe Enigma of Arrival\u003c\/i\u003e, and writing here in the classic form of linked narrations, Naipaul constructs a story of remarkable resonance and power, remembrance and invention.\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eIt is the story of a writer's lifelong journey towards an understanding of both the simple stuff of inheritance -- language, character, family history -- and the long interwoven strands of a deeply complicated historical past: \"things barely remembered, things released only by the act of writing.\" What he writes -- and what his release of memory enables us to see -- is a series of extended, illuminated moments in the history of Spanish and British imperialism in the Caribbean: Raleigh's final, shameful expedition to the New World; Francisco Miranda's disastrous invasion of South America in the eighteenth century; the more subtle aggressions of the mid-twentieth-century English writer Foster Morris; the transforming and distorting peregrinations of Blair, the black Trinidadian revolutionary. Each episode is viewed through the clarifying lens of the narrator's own post-colonial experience as a Trinidadian of Indian descent who, during the twilight of the Empire, immigrates to England, reinventing himself in order to escape the very history he is intent upon telling.\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e V. S. Naipaul\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0679761667\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780679761662\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Vintage\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/24\/1995\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 400\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.72lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.03h x 5.20w x 0.85d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e 12\/03\/1995 pg. 88\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNY Times Notable Bks of Year\u003c\/i\u003e 01\/01\/1995 pg. 88\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e 07\/16\/1995 pg. 32","brand":"V. S. Naipaul","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43925577629951,"sku":"9780679761662","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_46392790-bb13-4c6f-b809-7a87e8bfa969.jpg?v=1681078098","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/a-way-in-the-world-v-s-naipaul-9780679761662","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}