India - A Wounded Civilization [Hardcover]

V. S. Naipaul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 1977

In 1964 the author Naipaul wrote "An Area of Darkness", his semi-autobiographical account of a year in India. Two visits later he came to write "India: A Wounded Civilization" in which he recapitulates the feelings that the vast, mysterious and agonized continent aroused in him.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Extraordinarily forceful. . . . Naipaul is an elegantly precise and exacting writer.” –Newsweek

“A deep pleasure to read. . . . Adventurous, inquiring, observant, penetrating, intelligent.” –The Washington Post Book World

“Typical Naipaul–brilliantly lucid, terse, with something hardbitten yet resigned in the emotional background.” –The New York Times Book Review
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi?s ?Emergency,? V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left one hundred years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.

Drawing on novels, news reports, political memoirs, and his own encounters with ordinary Indians?from a supercilious prince to an engineer constructing housing for Bombay?s homeless?Naipaul captures a vast, mysterious, and agonized continent inaccessible to foreigners and barely visible to its own people. He sees both the burgeoning space program and the 5,000 volunteers chanting mantras to purify a defiled temple; the feudal village autocrat and the Naxalite revolutionaries who combined Maoist rhetoric with ritual murder. Relentless in its vision, thrilling in the keenness of its prose, India: A Wounded Civilization is a work of astonishing insight and candor. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Distribution Services; First Edition. states edition (October 20, 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0233969365
• ISBN-13: 978-0233969367
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,407,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressionistic history . . ., January 23, 2006

By 

David Oberlander "Kieslowski fan" - See all my reviews
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This review is from: India: A Wounded Civilization (Paperback)

Nobody writes like V.S. Naipaul. Nobody. His visual descriptions of ordinary people always hit the nail on the head. His central theme is the vibrant, pulsating, intellectual Hindu civilization has been dominated for too long--first, and longest, by the Muslim invaders and second, most recently, by the English. After the initial burst of optimism following independance, India has faced one obstacle after another, turning inward, revealing a 'wounded civilization,' a stilted culture who doesn't know herself anymore or what made her great. I'm not sure if I'm smart enough to comment on this theme . . . it is sort of an impressionistic history that cannot be divined by ordinary historical models. Using his own methods of analysis, V.S. Naipaul may not be an ideal person to do this analysis because like Ghandi and Nehru he studied(and, in his case, was born)outside India. This theme of exile and what is learned is brought back again and again. Naipaul writes with vigor. His words are a joy to read and ponder over. In some ways this is his most personal book.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Glimpse Into India, August 24, 2006

By 

Derrell Piper (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: India: A Wounded Civilization (Paperback)

Perhaps it was the setting, for I read this book in its entirety on an overnight flight to Delhi where I was about to immerse myself in northern India for about a month. But it's a fantastic book that seemed to me throughout my journeys to be as relevant today as it was when it was published in 1976. There's no way to really explain India to someone from the west who's not been there, but V.S. Naipaul's writings are a glimpse into the hope and hopelessness that is India.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a brilliant essay, July 12, 2003

By 

Robert J. Crawford (Balmette Talloires, France) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: India: A Wounded Civilization (Paperback)

This is not academic work that tries to cover an issue from some kind of systematic methodology that is currently in fashion. Instead, it is an extremely dense essay by an original novelist on what makes India what it is: chaotic, without a sense of historical continuity - his contrast with the European narrative that moves from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance/Reformation and Enlightenment to the industrial democracies is absolutely fascinating and yet deliciously succinct - and struggling to forge a modern identity in the post-colonial independence. What the reader gets is an interpretation, the details of which (s)he must fill in or debate oneself. Naipaul even does brilliant literary criticism of contemporary Indian novels in this book to shed light on his ideas, which as anecdotal and quirky as they are are always interesting. Disagree we might, but he stimulates even in error. Even after almost 30 years from its original publication, this essay is worth the read, if only to explore the reasoning behind rejecting it (I couldn't totally).

Warmly recommended.