“An Area of Darkness” V. S. Naipaul (1964) Review | A slap in the face

★★★★☆  I thought it’d be a travel journey where he saw poverty in India, spiritual and mystic and all that. How wrong I was, it’s a book that gives a slap in the face of those who think it that way.

🔽 log 🔽
An Area of Darkness 
V. S. Naipaul, 1964
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
304 pages
Read in 2023.08


🔽 Book review and notes 🔽

I thought it would be a travel journey from Naipaul, a winner of Bookers and Nobel Prize, where he saw poverty in India, spiritual and mystic and all that.
Well, I was completely wrong. 

It is more like a connection or a journey through himself, in the atmosphere of India.
Not heard to imagine he was in some kind of depressed state, but his reactions are raw and cruel.
He's not here to pretend that there's beauty in the poverty, as many Western travelers claim. 
Instead, he talks of the exploitation of the poverty, the filth of the poverty, of the blindness, or ignorance, of the endless corruption and of the excrement of all the negative things human.
Not surprised it was banned in India, it puts off the Western people who want to see the mystic India.

He had a pretty unpleasant visit to the village where his grandfather is from, that he's happy to dismiss, this story alone represent the sentiment.
It's not the UK where he lives, not Trinidad where he's from, India is to him familiar yet very unfamiliar. 
It's definitely not a happy read, it's a slap in your hypocritical face that wishes to say the poverty is beauty, no it's a middle finger to anyone who says that. Brutally honest.
No wonder he's not popular in India... at all.

🔽 Where to buy / Summary and more info 🔽

●●● Amazon.com (US) ●●●

An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India

●●● Amazon.co.uk (UK) ●●●
An Area of Darkness: His Discovery of India

●●● Amazon.it (Italy) ●●●
Un'area di tenebra (Italiano)