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Intelligence Squared

VS Naipaul in Conversation With Geordie Greig

Intelligence Squared

Intelligence Squared

News Commentary, Arts, News, Society & Culture

4.21.2K Ratings

🗓️ 12 June 2014

⏱️ 79 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nobel laureate and giant of Western letters, Trinidad-born V. S. Naipaul has excelled in both fiction and non-fiction. His latest book The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief is a travelogue in which Naipaul sets out to discover how far the old Africa's belief in magic has been subverted by the outside world. "I had expected that over the great size of Africa the practices of magic would significantly vary. But they didn’t. The diviners everywhere wanted to ‘throw the bones’ to read the future and the idea of ‘energy’ remained a constant, to be tapped into by the ritual sacrifice of body parts...To witness this, to be given some idea of its power, was to be taken far back to the beginning of things. To reach that beginning was the purpose of my book." In this event from May 2011, V.S. Naipaul talked to Evening Standard editor Geordie Greig. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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Thank you for downloading this Intelligence Squared podcast.

1:01.0

For more information on our debates, talks and discussions, visit

1:05.0

Intelligence Squared.com and sign up to the newsletter. It was 60 years ago that you

1:11.2

left Trinidad and went as an undergraduate to Oxford.

1:17.0

It was 50 years ago that you wrote the house of Mr Biswas.

1:22.0

It was 40 years ago that you won the Booker Prize. 30 years ago you

1:28.5

stirred up controversy, thought and your search for what Islam was about in among the believers.

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