A Turn in the South

by V. S. Naipaul

Overview

The Nobel Prize-winning author delivers a revealing and disturbing book about the American South--from Atlanta to Charleston, Tallahassee to Tuskegee, Nashville to Chapel Hill. - "His comprehension is astute and penetrating.... The book he has written brings new understanding [of] the subject." --The New York Times Book Review

In the tradition of political and cultural revelation V.S. Naipaul so brilliantly made his own in Among The Believers, A Turn In The South is his first book about the United States.

"Naipaul's chapters honor the diversity that marks the South.... Conservatives and liberals, whites and blacks, men and women speak for themselves, and reveal the dark side of the story in their own ways ... fascinating and revealing." --The New Republic

"Mr. Naipaul travels with the artist's eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning." --Evelyn Waugh

"A master of English prose." --Nobel Prize Winner J. M. Coetzee, The New York Review of Books

"His writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance.... No American writer could achieve [his] kind of evenhandedness, and it gives Naipaul's perceptions an almost built-in originality." --Atlantic Monthly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679724889
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/19/1990
Series:	Vintage International
Edition description:	1st Vintage international ed
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

V.S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.

His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now.

In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He died in 2018.

Hometown:

Wiltshire, England

Date of Birth:

August 17, 1932

Place of Birth:

Chaguanas, Trinidad

Education:

Queen's Royal College, Trinidad, 1943-48; B.A., University College, Oxford, 1953

Editorial Reviews

"His writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance.... No American writer could achieve [his] kind of evenhandedness, and it gives Naipaul's perceptions an almost built-in originality." --Atlantic Monthly

"Naipaul's chapters honor the diversity that marks the South.... Conservatives and liberals, whites and blacks, men and women speak for themselves, and reveal the dark side of the story in their own ways ... fascinating and revealing." --The New Republic

"A Tolstoyan spirit.... The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist." --John Updike

"Naipaul is a master of English prose." --J. M. Coetzee, The New York Review of Books

"V. S. Naipaul has a substantial claim as a comic writer.... This humor, conducted throughout with the utmost stylistic quietude, is completely original." --Kingsley Amis, The Spectator

"Mr. Naipaul travels with the artist's eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning." --Evelyn Waugh

"His comprehension is astute and penetrating.... The book he has written brings new understanding [of] the subject." --The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

``Naipaul portrays the American South as a strange mixture of self-reliance and community, desperation and playfulness,'' wrote PW . coffey/i like your changes/ok i suppose since the quote is ours?/pk ``Part travelogue, part oral history, this ruminative ramble permits Naipaul to depict the South as only an `outsider' could, with wonderment and multiple cross-cultural references.'' (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this work, parts of which orginally appeared in the New Yorker, noted essayist and novelist Naipaul travels the American South in an attempt to explore and explain this unique region. Stopping at places as diverse as Atlanta and rural Mississippi, Naipaul develops contacts and sources which span race, class, and sex. He admits that at the start of his journey he had no central theme. And, indeed, at the end, no clear ``mind'' of the South emerges. Rather, the South seems infinitely varied in outlook and attitude, vaguely unified only by a common past that tends to emphasize a sense of order, reverence for ``the land,'' and intense religious faith. Because of a perhaps necessary lack of focus, this will not be easy reading for everyone. But Naipaul's insights--and those of the Southerners he talks to--are penetrating enough to make this a valuable addition to most libraries.-- Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.

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