Describes the condition of Leonard Side, a mortician in Port of Spain, a Mohammedan of Indian ancestry and "a decorator of cakes and arranger of flowers". V.S. Naipaul was knighted in 1990 for services to literature.
'His own modern labour of love, loss and disquiet, this really is a book to treasure' - Malcolm Bradbury, Sunday Express
In his first fiction for seven years, V.S. Naipaul ranges across the centuries and the oceans, re-creating Walter Raleigh's doomed expedition to the Orinoco, the down-at-heel literary London of the 1950's, Miranda's disatreous invasion of South America. Opening in Port of Spain with Leonard Side, a mortician and decorator of cakes, and closing with a brutal murder in Africa, A Way in the World is an extraordinary, multi-layered portrait of individuals caught in the slip-stream of history.
'Everyone in this book is involved in a grave, beautiful, tragic dance ... Naipaul is one of the finest writers working today and this large, various and artful book is among his best' - Lucy Hughes-Hallett, The Times
'Characters, ideas, events from his past are elegantly juggled, set down and picked up again with a technical brilliance that comes from a life-time's experience' - Caryl Phillips, New Republic
'It takes only one paragraph of this book to see that Naipaul is at the peak of his ability: a man of profound insight and subtlety, writing in charming, evocative (and deceptively simple) prose - Cressida Connolly, Tatler