Asian Window

Posted by Namita Bhandare:

My column in Mint looks at two very different memoirs (L.K Advani’s life-story and V.S. Naipaul’s authorised biography) and why we’re going to remember them for very different reasons

The two books rocking the headlines are, by sheer coincidence, memoirs. The first has been making headlines even before its launch. The World Is What It Is, is Patrick French’s biography of Nobel Prize winning writer V.S. Naipaul. The other is L.K. Advani’s 986-page life story My Country, My Life, only recently launched and a headliner for otherreasons.

The two lives intersect, if only briefly. Naipaul was a Hindutva poster boy through the 1990s. In 1993 he told Times of India editor Dileep Padgaonkar, in an interview that finds mention in Advani’s book, that he reacted to the Ayodhya incident “not as badly as the others did”.

French’s book is remarkable for several reasons (disclosure: he is related to this columnist by marriage). The fact that he was given unprecedented access to a writer who has single-handedly popularized the word “curmudgeon” is, in itself, a minor miracle. The way French tells it, he was approached to write the biography (“I was hesitant; I was finishing another book”). He agreed on one condition — interviews with Naipaul and access to his archives along with permission to quote from them. Astonishingly, Naipaul agreed.

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