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Between Father and Son

Family Letters

by V.S. Naipaul ; Gillon R. Aitken

ISBN: 0375407308
ISBN-13: 9780375407307
Format: Hardcover

Summary

These candid, poignant, and entertaining letters were written during the 1950s between the writer V. S. Naipaul at Oxford and his family, chiefly his his younger sister who was in college in India, and his father in Trinidad-a failed writer who worked as a journalist and died young.

Customer Reviews

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Media Reviews

"[A] spirited, humane collection of letters....Naipaul not only offers intriguing insights into his passage toward artistry, but tells a bittersweet, genuinely rewarding tale."

   -- Kirkus

"[This] exchange of letters between the author and his family gives us a palimpsest of a writer's formation...."

   -- New Yorker

"Many of the themes familiar to the reader of V. S. Naipaul emerge in this correspondence: the enigma of arrival, the sadness of separation and exile, neocolonial ambition and the effort to find one's center....But what I found most poignant in this correspondence was the way it mirrors the themes of the South Asian diaspora. There is the great love that a family has for its child-a love wrapped up in ambition...."    -- Abraham Verghese

   -- New York Times Book Review

"The introduction is too sketchy to be helpful; the notes do little beyond identify family members. Editorial comment is non-existent....Yet the letters themselves are consistently articulate, interesting, moving and, in many places, powerful. It may be badly put together, but the book as a whole is invaluable."    -- Michael Gorra

   -- Times Literary Supplement

"What makes the letters between Vidia Naipaul and members of his close-knit family, especially Seepersad, his father, and his sister Kamla, so remarkable, however, is not his penchant for sweeping opinions. It is their literary beauty, and indeed their literary intent. For the correspondence between father and son...is also an exchange between two writers, one frustrated, and the other still aspiring....The letters are so deftly edited that they could well be read as a kind of epistolary novel of the artist as a young man. There is a progression there, that of a life finding its shape, or a man finding his centre."    -- Ian Buruma

   -- Literary Review

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Random House Inc
Published date: 2000
Size: 6.75 x 9.75 inches
Weight: 1.45 pounds
Pages: 297

Publisher's Notes

Offering an intimate portrait of the author's early, formative years, a collection of letters chronicles Naipaul's arrival in Oxford from Trinidad as a teenager and his complex relationships with members of his family, including his troubled father and beloved sister.

Other Editions

Hardcover - Random House Inc (2000) - from $6.94
Paperback - Random House Inc (2001) - from $3.00

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V.S. Naipaul

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