A Turn in the South - (Vintage International) by V S Naipaul (Paperback)

About the Book

Naipaul brings his unique intellect and insight to bear on the complex, often hidden life and culture of the South. His is a break-out book that speaks directly to the American audience.

Book Synopsis

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

Review Quotes

"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

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.