An Area of Darkness. His Discovery of India

The first book in V. S. Naipaul's acclaimed Indian trilogy - with a preface by the author. An Area of Darkness is V. S. Naipaul's semi-autobiographical account - at once painful and hilarious, but always thoughtful and considered - of his first visit to India, the land of his forebears. He was twenty-nine years old; he stayed for a year. From the moment of his inauspicious arrival in Prohibition-dry Bombay, bearing whisky and cheap brandy, he experienced a cultural estrangement from the subcontinent.
It became for him a land of myths, an area of darkness closing up behind him as he travelled .