Volume 49, Number 16 · October 24, 2002
Naipaul's Book of the World
By Hilary Mantel
The Writer and the World
by V.S. Naipaul, edited and with an introduction by Pankaj Mishra
Knopf, 524 pp., $30.00
There are places on earth where, at certain moments in the cycle of day and night, the two are indistinguishable. It is impossible to know, without other referents, whether you are looking at dawn or dusk. And there are places at the margins of cities, or at the edges of the man-made sprawl of holiday islands, where at twilight growth and decay are indistinguishable; you can't tell, at first glance, whether you are looking at a building site or a ruin. Is that earth-colored brick waiting for its glassy marble cladding, or is it crumbling back into the condition of soil? And that distant rumble, of traffic or marching feet: Have the entrepreneurs arrived, or is it the barbarians? Is it possible that they are the same?
Review, 4657 words
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