Researched with the full co-operation of its Nobel Prize-winning subject, this is the first major biography of one of our greatest writers. Patrick French has been granted unique access to V. S. Naipaul's private papers and his personal recollections. Naipaul's extraordinary gift - producing, uniquely, masterpieces of both fiction and non-fiction - is born of a forceful, visionary impulse, whose roots Patrick French traces with a sympathetic brilliance and devastating insight that does full justice to this enigmatic genius.