''An Unfinished Journey'' is a posthumous collection of essays by

Shiva Naipaul Shiva Naipaul (; 25 February 1945 – 13 August 1985), born Shivadhar Srinivasa Naipaul in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, was an Indo-Trinidadian and Tobagonian, Indo-Trinidadian and British novelist and journalist. Life and work Shiva Na ...

, published by Hamish and Hamilton in 1986. The foreword is written by the author's father-in-law, Douglas Stuart, who creates a short biographical sketch of the author, describing Shiva as a writer who gained in discipline but was painfully slow, even at times spending an entire afternoon trying to finish a sentence. He also asked Naipaul why he had lost the comic tone in his writing, and wrote that Naipaul attributed it to the arresting horror of witnessing the aftermath of the

Jonestown Massacre The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationa ...

, part of his research for the book ''Black & White''. The essays in the collection are in part autobiographical, such as those on Shiva's relationship with his brother VS Naipaul, and his experiences in Australia and other countries. The titular essay is the beginning of an unfinished (due to death) travel book about

South East Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainland ...

. Also included is an essay called "The Illusion of the Third World", originally commissioned by

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

Television.

References

1986 books Essay collections {{essay-stub