An Area of Darkness

An Area of Darkness

First edition cover
Author	V. S. Naipaul
Language	English
Series	The Indian Trilogy
Genre	Travel writing
Publisher	André Deutsch
Publication date	1964
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print
Pages	281 (hardcover first edition)
Followed by	India: A Wounded Civilization

An Area of Darkness is a non-fiction book written by V. S. Naipaul and published in 1964. It is a travelogue detailing Naipaul's trip through India in the early sixties. It was the first of Naipaul's Indian trilogy that includes India: A Wounded Civilization (1977) and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). The narration is anecdotal and descriptive.

The book is considered Naipaul's reckoning with his ancestral homeland and a sharp chronicle of his travels through 1960s India, encountering distressing poverty in the slums, corrupt government workers in the cities, and the ethereal beauty of the Himalayas. ^[1] A passionate but pessimistic work, An Area of Darkness conveys the sense of disillusionment which Naipaul experienced on his first visit to India in the 1960s. The book was banned in India for its "negative portrayal of India and its people". ^[2]

According to some book reviewers, the title of the book, An Area of Darkness, was not so much a reference to India of the sixties, as to Naipaul's feelings of distress and anxiety encountering poverty and suffering in India. ^{[3] [4] [5] [6]}

References

1. "An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India". Bookshop.org. 5 May 2022.
2. Suroor, Hasan (3 March 2012). "You can't read this book". thehindu.com.
3. French 2008, p. 230.
4. Dooley 2006, p. 44.
5. French 2008, p. 215.
6. Dooley 2006, pp. 41–42.

Sources

• Dooley, Gillian (2006). V.S. Naipaul, Man and Writer. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN   978-1-57003-587-6 . Retrieved 30 September 2013.
• French, Patrick (2008). The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul . New York: Alfred Knopf. ISBN   978-0-307-27035-1 . Retrieved 19 September 2013.