''The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul'' is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author

V. S. Naipaul Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienati ...

Patrick French Patrick French (born 1966) is a British writer, historian and academician. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he studied English and American literature, and received a PhD in South Asian Studies. He was appointed as the inau ...

. It was published in 2008 (by

Picador A ''picador'' (; pl. ''picadores'') is one of the pair of horse-mounted bullfighters in a Spanish-style bullfight that jab the bull with a lance. They perform in the ''tercio de varas'', which is the first of the three stages in a stylized bullf ...

in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is the opening sentence from Naipaul's book '' A Bend in the River''. ''The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.'' French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage in 1996.

Reception

The biography has been extensively reviewed: the reviewers include

Paul Theroux Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American novelist and travel writer who has written numerous books, including the travelogue, '' The Great Railway Bazaar'' (1975). Some of his works of fiction have been adapted as feature films. He ...

, who wrote an earlier book about Naipaul. The biography won unanimous praise from all quarters including Naipaul experts Teju Cole and James Wood in the New Yorker.

Awards

The biography was selected by the editors of the ''

New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...

'' as one of the ''Times "10 Best Books of 2008". It won the 2008

National Book Critics Circle Award The National Book Critics Circle Awards are a set of annual American literary awards by the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) to promote "the finest books and reviews published in English".Hawthornden Prize The Hawthornden Prize is a British literary award that was established in 1919 by Alice Warrender, who was born at Hawthornden Castle. Authors under the age of 41 are awarded on the quality of their "imaginative literature", which can be written ...

References

2008 non-fiction books Biographies about writers Hawthornden Prize-winning works National Book Critics Circle Award-winning works {{lit-bio-book-stub