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Cargando... An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India (1964 original; edición 2002)por V. S. Naipaul (Autor)
Información de la obraAn Area of Darkness por V. S. Naipaul (1964)
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. you can't go home again, even if it was just your imagined home. ( ) Having never been to India, I feel bad criticizing a travel writer about their perceptions of the country. Unfortunately, I found V.S. Naipaul's An Area of Darkness: A Discovery of India to be disparaging, hypercritical, and persnickety. I had previously read Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas and Miguel Street, two books I enjoyed despite having some of the same criticisms. I had also read several criticisms that point out Naipaul's pro-British, pro-colonialist attitudes. Those attitudes were on full display in this treatment of India. Every person he meets is portrayed as a one-dimensional beggar who is stuck in their misguided, antiquated ways. In the book, Naipaul acts like a man staring out a window, casting judgments on the world around him. Reading his negative quibbles was quite a chore. Naipaul is a gifted writer and his prose can be lovely, but this wasn't enough to save the book from his constant grumbling about the uneducated people around him. In this book, it is easy to see why many critics have found disfavor with Naipaul. The racism he shows here is less apparent than in A Bend in the River or in some of his essays, but his colonialist attitudes are on full display. I found this one of the more enjoyable Naipaul books with his searing description of India and the Indians, and the poetic writing. There were many memorable phrases eg. 'sensationally unwashed people'. This phrase alone is indicative of Naipaul's brutal description of India, some of which seem funny and comical but is in reality, a harsh indictment of the country. He explains how the caste system leads to India's lack of progress. Enlightening for a foreigner like me, but understandably distasteful for a citizen of the country. There were some difficult chapters. In the end, India remains an area of darkness to him, and to us. If one can imagine the difficulties Naipaul suffers now in a period in which the principle of 'free speech' is being eroded by nice white people to 'you can say what you like as long as we agree with it', it speaks buckets for this book that he experienced the 'censorship of the offended' the very moment it appeared. Banned in India and still banned over fifty years later. This sits badly with me, not only because of the issue of free speech, but also because he didn't look at all at the side of India which is truly dark. He could so easily have talked of the violence and exploitation, but he left it unsaid. He spoke only of what he saw and how he felt. A travelogue filled with angst, not only towards the India which so upset him, but also towards himself. No doubt one learns a lot about one's own inadequacies in such a situation and Naipaul doesn't shrink from them one bit. I don't really understand why people who see this as only a personal critique of India, don't understand this. Neither writer nor subject come off well in this encounter. There are only losers, but why should it be any other way? For the rest, please go here: https://alittleteaalittlechat.wordpress.com/2016/04/05/an-area-of-darkness-by-vs...
Una zona de oscuridad es un cl#65533;sico fundamental de la literatura de viajes, probablemente el libro m#65533;s elegante y apasionado que se haya escrito sobre la India Una zona de oscuridad es el primer libro del premio Nobel V.S. Naipaul sobre la tierra de sus antepasados, fruto de su primer viaje al subcontinente indio en 1964. Desde el caos de Bombay a la belleza inmarcesible de Cachemira, de una sagrada cueva helada en el Himalaya a un templo abandonado en Madr#65533;s, Naipaul descubre una asombrosa variedad de tipos humanos, modestos funcionarios p#65533;blicos y criados arrogantes; un sinuoso sant#65533;n y un fascinado estadounidense en busca de la fe. Naipaul tambi#65533;n expone su reacci#65533;n personal y distinta al paralizante sistema de castas, a la aparentemente serena aceptaci#65533;n de la pobreza y la miseria, y el conflicto entre el deseo de autodeterminaci#65533;n y la nostalgia por la dominaci#65533;n brit#65533;nica. En Una zona de oscuridad forma, junto a India, tras un mill#65533;n de motines (DeBolsillo 2011) e India: una civilizaci#65533;n herida, su aclamada trilog#65533;a sobre la India. #65533;Mi India no era como la de los ingleses o los brit#65533;nicos. Mi India estaba llena de dolor. Unos sesenta a#65533;os antes mis antepasados hab#65533;an hecho el largu#65533;simo viaje desde India hasta el Caribe, de al menos seis semanas, y aunque apenas se hablaba de ello cuando yo era peque#65533;o, a medida que fui haci#65533;ndome mayor empez#65533; a preocuparme cada vez m#65533;s. De modo que, a pesar de ser escritor, yo no iba a la India de Forster o de Kipling. Iba a una India que solamente exist#65533;a en mi cabeza...#65533; La cr#65533;tica ha dicho... #65533;La literatura de viajes de Naipaul, inteligente y subjetiva, conforma una narraci#65533;n directa del choque de civilizaciones.#65533; The New York Times #65533;Esto es la India. No conozco otro libro que consiga capturar con tanta precisi#65533;n esta locura... Brillante.#65533; John Wain, The Observer #65533;Sus dotes de narrador son espectaculares... Uno regresa con placer a las revelaciones que se van desvelando a un tiempo sobre la India y sobre #65533;l.#65533; The Times (London) #65533;Escriba en el g#65533;nero que escriba, Naipaul es un maestro.#65533; The New York Review of Books ENGLISH DESCRIPTION "A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul's profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man and a deluded American religious seeker. An Area of Darkness also abounds with Naipaul's strikingly original responses to India's paralyzing caste system, its apparently serene acceptance of poverty and squalor, and the conflict between its desire for self-determination and its nostalgia for the British raj. The result may be the most elegant and passionate book ever written about the subcontinent." No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)915.4044History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in Asia Indian Subcontinent Travel 1947–1971Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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