“What remains impressive…is Naipaul’s sense of wonder at the worlds he has discovered. For all his haughtiness, something fresh and innocent infuses his early memories and his recollections of the alienation and loneliness he felt in his early years in London. Few writers have traveled as far from their origins as Naipaul has, and done it so willingly and with such single-mindedness, and few have regretted that estrangement quite so much.”

“Essential reading for those who admire his work and want to understand it further. But there is much there for any enquiring mind, as it offers the insights and observations on literature, history and cultural sensibility of an honest and truly global thinker.”

“There are some amazingly lofty and chilling lines…But there are also explorations of his own woundedness, of his personal myth of origins, or lack of origins…Naipaul is at his best here when teasing out the ironies and complexities of cultural exchange in the persons of figures with whom he can identify.”

“As ever, Naipaul’s sentences are tightly coiled and muscular; they embody the very qualities they praise…His characteristic excursions into the byways of history and autobiography are often revelatory, opening up new vistas…this is a brilliant work from a man who more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer.”

“An important coda, on a lifetime of ‘seeing’ and, perhaps unwittingly, on the violence of doing so…Its most brilliant pages (and the brilliance is still there, even in this late phase) are its most idiosyncratic and individual ones, reminding us that one compelling way of looking usually suggests the possibility of another.”

“Looking hard at cruelty, taking nothing for granted, are the hallmarks of Naipaul’s stance. His writing…gleams with brilliance…It’s impossible not to admire the prose.”

“Fascinating…[Naipaul’s] ability to thoroughly engage with both the stylistic flaws of Flaubert’s novel Salammbô and an early biography of Gandhi within the space of a few pages is both illuminating and impressive.”

“As always with prickly, discerning, and uncompromising Naipaul, the discussions are stern in their testimony to the wounds of imperialism and prejudice, and tart with disdain for hypocrisy and artistic cowardice…[An] altogether piquant, magisterial, and maddening volume…Naipaul is exacting, even excoriating, because he cares so deeply about literature and the world.”