V. S. Naipaul
Magic Seeds
INTERNATIONAL ACCLAIM FOR V. S. NAIPAUL AND
Magic Seeds
“Naipaul has a great gift for … crushingly economical observations…. [His] books … are passionately engaged with the world. ”
— The New York Review of Books
“An elegant little story — with a moral…. What is distinctive [is] the light that it sheds on India, especially rural India. ”
— The Wall Street Journal
“A masterful and evocative writer…. The language is clear and readable…. [His] ideas are rich, provocative, and worthy. ”
— Rocky Mountain News
“Original, ruthlessly honest, intellectually stimulating and masterfully written. ”
— The Times (London)
“There is a terrible purity to the prose. It is clean and dry, tough but never brittle…. [Magic Seeds] revisit[s] most, if not all, of the themes, obsessions and social worlds of his earlier fiction. ”
— Newsday
“Offers a gripping glimpse at the sadness of a dream deferred. ”
— Entertainment Weekly
“Bleakly comic….
Full of all Naipaul’s exact and cumulative brilliance. ”
— The Guardian
“A remarkably astute … witness to the world with an extraordinary contribution to literature. ”
— The Village Voice
“Riveting…. Masterful prose … indelible images. ”
— Commentary
“[Naipaul] has achieved the top of his form. ”
— The Star-Ledger (Newark)
“Magic Seeds occupies an identifiable place in Naipaul’s philosophy, and those who generally enjoy his work will like what’s here. Readers unfamiliar with his work have much to gain as well…. His precise art offers something revelatory. ”
— The Plain Dealer
“Richly drawn…. Vivid and revealing. ”
— The Decatur Daily
“Beautiful, enchanting prose…. In some ways, Willie [Chandran] embodies every character Naipaul has created in his brilliant career. ”
— Associated Press
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LATER — IN THE teak forest, in the first camp, when during his first night on sentry duty he had found himself for periods wishing only to cry, and when with the relief of dawn there had also come the amazing cry of a far-off peacock, the cry a peacock makes in the early morning after it has had its first drink of water at some forest pool: a raucous, tearing cry that should have spoken of a world refreshed and remade but seemed after the long bad night to speak only of everything lost, man, bird, forest, world; and then, when that camp was a romantic memory, during the numbing guerrilla years, going on and on, in forest, village, small town, when to travel about in disguise had often appeared to be an end in itself and it was possible for much of the day to forget what the purpose of the disguise was, when he had felt himself decaying intellectually, felt bits of his personality breaking off; and then in the jail, with its blessed order, its fixed timetable, its protecting rules, the renewal it offered — later it was possible to work out the stages by which he had moved from what he would have considered the real world to all the subsequent areas of unreality: moving as it were from one sealed chamber of the spirit to another.
ONE. THE ROSE-SELLERS
