Beginning with a richly detailed portrait of Naipaul’s childhood in colonial Trinidad, French gives us the boy born to an Indian family, the displaced soul in a displaced community, who by dint of talent and ambition finds the only imaginable way out: a scholarship to Oxford. London in the 1950s offers hope and his first literary success, but homesickness and depression almost defeat Vidia, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an Englishwoman who will devote herself to his work and well-being. She will stand by him, sometimes tenuously, for more than four decades, even as Naipaul embarks on a twenty-four-year affair, which will awaken half-dead passions and feed perhaps his greatest wave of dizzying creativity. Amid this harrowing emotional life, French traces the course of the fierce visionary impulse underlying Naipaul’s singular power, a gift to produce masterpieces of fiction and nonfiction.

Informed by exclusive access to V. S. Naipaul’s private papers and personal recollections, and by great feeling for his formidable body of work, French’s revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius.

“French’s character analysis is not flattering, but it does justice to its subject’s complexity….French’s book is a magnificent achievement….But the achievement is partly Naipaul’s. For he did not have to agree to these conditions, or speak to French so openly. He has chosen to submit himself to the truth-telling and ruthless objectivity that have always characterised his own work.”

- John Cary, The Sunday Times

“penetrating, wide-ranging and unflinching biography….The closing pages…are enough to draw tears.”

- The Economist

“Patrick French has brought off something very difficult, so difficult indeed that I would have thought it impossible. He has written a biography of a living person that is every bit as honest, perceptive, compelling and plain good as if his subject was dead. It is a masterly performance, and if a better biography is published this year, I shall be astonished….It is rare to wish that a biography running to over 500 pages was longer, but this is an exception.”

- Allan Massie, Literary Review

“a brilliant biography: exemplary in its thoroughness, sympathetic but tough in tone. Against Naipaul’s own increasing ‘tendency to caricature himself in public,’ and against the distortions peddled by snubbed friends and ideological enemies, French has set down a complex and credible portrait. Reading it I was enthralled — and frequently amused (how incredibly funny Naipaul can be!). I was also continually aware of a great and unrelenting pressure on the developing writer; it suffuses the book like suspense….lovely to read….French’s accounts…have their own entertainment value...”

- Sebastian Smee, Spectator

“Patrick French’s brilliant and candid The World Is What It Is lays bare the demons that drove one of our greatest — and most controversial — writers….one of the brutally frank interviews that provide the backbone of this extraordinary book….a biography that reads on one level like a contemporary variation on Bluebeard’s Castle, the kind of malign fairy tale at which, according to Naipaul, English writers excel….The World Is What It Is must have taken nerves of iron to write. Its clarity, honesty, even-handedness, its panoramic range and close emotional focus, above all its virtually unprecedented access to the dark secret life at its heart, make it one of the most gripping biographies I’ve ever read.”

- Hilary Spurling, The Observer

“Few people expected Patrick French’s biography to be a full account of the writer’s life … It turns out that doubters underestimated French, who appears to have won himself a free hand”

- Christopher Tayler, The Guardian

“A terrific achievement — in effect, an addition to the canon of Naipaul’s own works.  There is very much more to this narrative than this personal story that has been so seized upon.  French portrays the Trinidad of Naipaul’s childhood brilliantly; he discriminates finely between Naipaul’s books; he deals sharply with the business side of Naipaul’s literary career.  The research, documentation and organisation of the material are admirable.”

- David Sexton, Evening Standard

“Copiously detailed and largely sympathetic … French’s method is phenomenological: he presents the evidence as he finds it, in his subject’s words or the words of those who knew him, keeping psychological analysis to a minimum, and intervening only occasionally to add his discreet opinions.”

- Aamer Hussein, Independent

“The biography must be the frankest authorised biography of anyone alive and in possession of their senses.”

- Ian Jack, The Guardian

“This astonishing biography … It seems I didn’t know half the horrors.”

- Paul Theroux, Sunday Times News Review

“A gripping book, one of the most compelling biographies I have read.”

- Sara Wheeler, Daily Telegraph

“French’s integrity impresses … a magnificent read.  It will be one of the Books of the Year … a serious read that is more than worthy of its subject.  And beautifully made.”

- Tom Adair, The Scotsman

“French’s engrossing biography never forgets Naipaul is a great writer.  One hopes he will, in due course, go on to complete the life.”

- John Sutherland, Financial Times

‘An awesome achievement’

- Peter Lewis, Mail on Sunday