Brilliant, Enthralling, uncompromising, controversial, self-destructive and anything else you can think of.
Naipaul, Rushdie, Tasleema Nasreen Paul Theroux
Naipaul and his book Beyond belief
civmag.com
One View:
n Mon, 4 May 1998, Champa Bilwakesh wrote: About Naipaul
At the present point I'm in he is into the detail lives of a Jain
businessman, another person who is just Hindu, no caste, and a Muslim. No Brahmins yet. He travels to the locality where these people live, sleep and work;he talks to them, asking questions, recording their answers and thoughts.
NAIPAUL:
He writes just about the best English prose of any writer now alive, in my opinion. I could read, with pleasure and profit, absolutely anything he wrote. Sometimes he is crotchety of course, and in his earlier books on India he is a curmudgeon, but *A Million Mutinies Now* is a much more fair-minded and hopeful look at the country than he has achieved before. His eye for the telling detail... his power to interweave moral judgment with personal reflection... his sense of history and willingness to think about large cultural issues over time... hey, his PROSE STYLE... what can I say, I love the guy for his style even when I strongly disagree with him (as I often do) on matters of substance.
cordially,
FP
The Campaign for PEN Honorary Member Taslima Nasreen During 1995, PEN Honorary Member Taslima Nasreen continued to live in Europe, having fled Bangladesh in August 1994 in fear for her life. The charges against her have not been dropped, however. She is charged under Section 295A of Bangladesh's Penal Code for having "deliberately and maliciously outraged the religious sentiments of a class of citizens."
Nasreen has written numerous books criticizing Muslim extremism and discrimination against women. Her collection The Game in Reverse was published by George Braziller (New York) in September 1995. Her controversial book Laijja ("Shame"), released in February 1993, gave rise to demonstrations and death threats. A bounty was placed on Nasreen's head, and the Bangladeshi government provided her with police protection. In June 1994, extremist groups erupted over Nasreen again, this time because of statements Nasreen was said to have made in an interview with an Indian journalist working for a Calcutta-based newspaper, The Statesman. Nasreen objected to the charges, saying that she had not called for a revision to the Koran, as demonstrators were claiming, but to the shari'a law with respect
to the guidance it gave regarding the treatment of women. Soon
thereafter, on June 4, as the demonstrations mounted and religious
elements threatened to topple the government, the ruling authorities
issued a warrant for Nasreen's arrest, on charges of "deliberately
and maliciously outraging the religious feelings of Muslims" under
article 295a of the penal code. Nasreen went into hiding.
PEN's work on behalf of Nasreen began in 1993, after she received the first death threats. The organization had sucessfully called for her passport to be reinstated after it had been confiscated, allowing her to travel abroad. The campaign was led by PEN member and novelist Meredith Tax. After Nasreen went into hiding, Tax remained one of Nasreen's primary resorts in the West, and the only Westerner Nasreen trusted enough to stay in direct contact with throughout her period in hiding.
The result of PEN's efforts and those of other groups and those of
her Bangladeshi lawyers was that Nasreen was finally given adequate protection so that she could appear before the High Court in Dhaka. She was granted unconditional bail and allowed to leave the country, whereupon she made her way to Stockholm, where the Swedish Center of International PEN had invited her to stay. Today, she continues to live in Europe but stresses that she hopes to return to Bangladesh one day.
Paul Theroux: ends his 31-year friendship with Naipaul, by writing a book titiled "VIDIA'S SHADOW" criticalof Naipaul. Read NYTimes Moday Issue dated July 27,1998 E1
Theroux says that his long-time friend is a deeply flawed man - neurotic, cheap, misogynist, horribly rude and often outrageously offensive - if a brilliant writer and enthralling companion. He goes about giving examples of every adjective appended to Naipaul. |
