{"product_id":"9781400079803","title":"The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe first major biography of V.S. Naipaul, the controversial and enigmatic Nobel laureate: a stunning writer whose only stated ambition was greatness, in pursuit of which goal nothing else was sacred. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBeginning in rich detail in Trinidad, where Naipaul was born into an Indian family, Patrick French skillfully examines Naipaul’s life within a displaced community and his fierce ambition at school. He describes how, on scholarship at Oxford, homesickness and depression struck with great force; the ways in which Naipaul’s first wife helped him to cope and their otherwise fraught marriage; and Naipaul’s struggles throughout subsequent uncertainties in England, including his twenty-five-year-long affair.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNaipaul’s extraordinary gift—producing, uniquely, masterpieces of both fiction and nonfiction—is most of all born of a forceful, visionary impulse, whose roots French traces with a sympathetic brilliance and devastating insight.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47050060497136,"sku":"9781400079803","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781400079803_p0.jpg?v=1763711742","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781400079803","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}