The Mystic Masseur
A Novel
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The Mystic Masseur
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Narrated by:
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Ron Butler
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By:
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V. S. Naipaul
About this listen
The first of Naipaul's 12 novels tells of one man's meteoric rise and hilarious metamorphosis from failed schoolteacher and struggling masseur to the most popular man in Trinidad.
In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel, Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. To understand a little better, one has to realize that in the 1940s masseurs were the island's medical practitioners of choice. As one character observes, "I know the sort of doctors they have in Trinidad. They think nothing of killing two, three people before breakfast."
Ganesh's ascent is variously aided and impeded by a Dickensian cast of rogues and eccentrics. There's his skeptical wife, Leela, whose schooling has made her excessively fond of punctuation marks, and Leela's father, Ramlogan, a man of startling mood changes and an ever-ready cutlass. There's the aunt known as The Great Belcher. There are patients pursued by malign clouds or afflicted with an amorous fascination with bicycles. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad's dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.
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By: V. S. Naipaul
-
Guerrillas
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 7
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Story4 out of 5 stars 7
On an unnamed Caribbean Island, political tensions provoked by race and poverty are high. Jimmy Ahmed, a young mixed-race man, has been hailed as a revolutionary leader of the people. Roche, imprisoned for activities against South Africa's apartheid regime, and Jane, a feckless English rich girl wanting to feel a part of something bigger, get sucked into the turmoil and world of Ahmed. But does anyone achieve anything by causing unrest? Do any of them really want freedom in a new society or just the old society with themselves at the helm of power?
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1 out of 5 stars
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Reactionary Islamophobia 101
- By Kobugi on 03-13-20
By: V. S. Naipaul
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An Area of Darkness
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Simon Vance
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 57
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 49
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Story4 out of 5 stars 48
A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Go slowly with this one, or it's a slog
- By John S. on 08-15-21
By: V. S. Naipaul
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Half a Life
- A Novel
- By: V. S. Naipaul
- Narrated by: Neil Shah
- Length: 7 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 8
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 8
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Story3.5 out of 5 stars 7
The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray.
By: V. S. Naipaul
V S Naipaul
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