{"product_id":"the-world-is-what-it-is-the-authorized-biography-of-vs-naipaul-9781400079803","title":"The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first major biography of V.S. Naipaul, the controversial and enigmatic Nobel laureate: a stunning writer whose only stated ambition was greatness, in pursuit of which goal nothing else was sacred. \u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Beginning in rich detail in Trinidad, where Naipaul was born into an Indian family, Patrick French skillfully examines Naipaul' s life within a displaced community and his fierce ambition at school. He describes how, on scholarship at Oxford, homesickness and depression struck with great force; the ways in which Naipaul's first wife helped him to cope and their otherwise fraught marriage; and Naipaul's struggles throughout subsequent uncertainties in England, including his twenty-five-year-long affair. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Naipaul's extraordinary gift--producing, uniquely, masterpieces of both fiction and nonfiction--is most of all born of a forceful, visionary impulse, whose roots French traces with a sympathetic brilliance and devastating insight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePatrick French\u003c\/b\u003e was born in England in 1966 and studied literature at Edinburgh University. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eYounghusband\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eLiberty or Death\u003c\/i\u003e; \u003ci\u003eTibet, Tibet\u003c\/i\u003e; and \u003ci\u003eThe World Is What It Is\u003c\/i\u003e, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hawthornden Prize. French is the winner of the \u003ci\u003eSunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e Young Writer of the Year Award, the Royal Society of Literature Heinemann Prize, and the Somerset Maugham Award. He died in 2023.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50849734263058,"sku":"9781400079803","price":15.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_7a7239e8-01d5-4f60-a148-9d366ccd7c86.jpg?v=1737401293","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-world-is-what-it-is-the-authorized-biography-of-vs-naipaul-9781400079803","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}