???Brilliant ??? tender, lyrical, explosive??? Observer V.S. Naipaul was twenty-nine when he first visited India. This is his semi-autobiographical account???at once painful and hilarious, but always thoughtful and considered???a revelation both of the country and of himself. ???A devastating work, but proof that a novelist of Naipaul???s stature can often define problems quicker and more effectively than a team of economists and other experts??? The Times Prompted by the Emergency of 1975, Naipaul casts a more analytical eye, convinced that India, wounded by a thousand years of foreign rule, has not yet found an ideology of regeneration. ???Indispensable for anyone who wants seriously to come to grips with the experience of India??? New York Times Book Review It is twenty-six years since Naipaul???s first trip to India. Taking an anti-clockwise journey around the metropolises???including Bombay, Madras, Calcutta and Delhi???he focuses on the country???s development since Independence. The author recedes, allowing Indians to tell the stories, and a dynamic oral history of the country emerges.