"Brilliant.
His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, includ.
In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State.
His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival.
He pursued no other profession.
He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954.
He came to England on a scholarship in 1950.
Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932.
Another display of Naipaul\'s remarkable talent." --The Independent (London) About the Author: V.
S. . . . "Highly accomplished.
With its incisive observation and brilliant cultural analysis, Beyond Belief is a startling and revelatory addition to the Naipaul canon.
Yet the result is a collection of stories that has the author\'s unmistakable stamp.
Naipaul deliberately effaces himself to let the voices of his subjects come through.
S.
In extended conversations with a vast number of people--a rare survivor of the martyr brigades of the Iran-Iraq war, a young intellectual training as a Marxist guerilla in Baluchistan, an impoverished elderly couple in Teheran whose dusty Baccarat chandeliers preserve the memory of vanished wealth, and countless others--V.
Beyond Belief is the result of his five-month journey in 1995 through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia--lands where descendants of Muslim converts live at odds with indigenous traditions, and where dreams of Islamic purity clash with economic and political realities.
Naipaul returned to the four non-Arab Islamic countries he reported on so vividly at the time of Ayatollah Khomeini\'s triumph in Iran.
S.
A powerfully observed, stylistically elegant exploration." --The New York Times A New York Times Notable Book of the Year "The book\'s strength lies in Naipaul\'s extraordinary ability as a storyteller to draw striking portraits of a cross section of individuals."--The Boston Globe Fourteen years after the publication of his landmark travel narrative Among the Believers, V. . . . "Brilliant
