The Mystic Masseur

Description

V.S. Naipaul's first novel - humorous, endlessly inventive and brilliantly imagined. The Mystic Masseur, V.S. Naipaul's first published novel, is the story of Ganesh, who at the beginning of the novel is a struggling masseur at a time when, as the narrator puts it, masseurs were ten a penny in Trinidad. He soon begins a meteoric rise, from failed primary school teacher and masseur to author, revered mystic and MBE. This is a journey equally memorable for its hilarity as its bewildering success. Naipaul's clarity of style, humorous touch and powerful characterization are all in evidence in one of the author's finest creations. Inventive, touching and perceptive, this novel is a wonderful introduction for readers new to Naipaul's writing.

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and most recently The Masque of Africa, and a collection of letters, Between a Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

"One of the few contemporary writers of whom we can speak in terms of greatness."-Mel Gussow, "Newsday" "For sheer abundance of talent, there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V. S. Naipaul."-"The New York Times Book Review ""Naipaul's writing is clean and beautiful, and he has a great eye for nuance."-"The Atlantic Monthly ""No one else around today...seems able to employ prose fiction so deeply as the very voice of exile."-"The New York Review of Books "