The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief - Hardcover

'[Naipaul] is dry, often irked, sometimes enraged. He is quite rude. But he is also patient (not a trait often associated with him), engaged, funny, self-reflective and thoughtful [...] The Masque of Africa is a book for outsiders, for those who may never visit Africa or may know it only superficially. But it is also a book in which Africans themselves may find something to learn.' --Aminatta Forna, Observer

`Naipaul offers some fascinating insights on everything from Christianity and Islam to political leadership and consumerism, encased - as expected - in sharp and elegant prose.' --Time Out

`There are moments of real insight: Naipaul's no-nonsense approach, although often brutal and sometimes downright rude, reveals some fascinating truths about modern Africans' struggle to place themselves in a world overwhelmed by Western/Islamic ideals and find a faith that fits their changing needs.' --Metro (Non-Fiction Book of the Week)

'Naipaul travels, he asks, he listens attentively and, above all else, he notices, often seeing what others do not or cannot. That acute gift has never left him [...] In this new book, the best moments are those lit by the radiance of sudden and unexpected noticing [...] As he travels, often irritably, through Africa on this, his latest and perhaps final long journey{...}he is sustained by the old ideal of unadorned truth-telling. Like Edgar in King Lear, he speaks what he feels, not what he ought to say - which is admirable and is why, even now, so late in the day, you still read him with all the old fascination, [...] quite unlike anyone else: The Writer, still the only one.' --New Statesman

'Africa is the setting for several of V. S. Naipaul's finest fictional stories. And there is a pattern to the themes in the African works: fear, post-colonial disintegration, isolation, approaching catastrophe, as sense of being trapped in a way of life that is hovering on the borders of savagery. It is an unforgettable vision, but it remains that of an outsider. In The Masque of Africa, Naipaul goes deeper... It has its own value as an investigation into the least discussed aspect of African society today.' --Spectator

'In his latest travelogue, Sir V.S. Naipaul - Nobel laureate, man of opinions, giant of Western Letters - examines the enduring power of [belief in magic] in six African countries... compelling, insightful, often somberly beautiful.' --Sunday Telegraph

'Naipaul's deceptively casual account is of great structural sophistication... He is, in every instinct and at every moment, a man who sees the world under the aspect of the written word. He is, to that degree, an alien presence in an oral, visual culture, but here is the genius of The Masque of Africa: that it dances around that paradox and reveals far more than its uneasy protagonist seems to know.' --Herald

'[Naipaul] does caustically capture a hard truth: the nature and traditions of Africa are being nibbled away.' --Economist

'Nobel Laureate, V. S. Naipaul, arguably the greatest living writer of English prose, is one of our few literary stars to shine with equal brilliance both in fiction and non-fiction... The Masque of Africa is marvelously entertaining. Flashes of the old master illuminate its pages' --Mail on Sunday

'VS Naipaul made his name as one of the defining voices of post-colonial fiction, and was awarded the Nobel prize for his talent in recovering forgotten and suppressed stories... A daring but thoughtful account of the ironies and tragedies of belief in modern Africa.' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly

An astonishingly prescient, beautifully written and deeply humane new work of non-fiction from one of our greatest living writers.