SOURCE: Wilson, A. N. “Going Native.” London Review of Books (13 May 1999): 9.

In the following review, Wilson describes Sir Vidia's Shadow, as an engrossing, if unflattering, portrait of literary jealousy and resentment.

I have been trying to explain to myself how such a book as this [Sir Vidia's Shadow] held my uninterrupted attention from first to last. I read it almost at a sitting. This was certainly not because of any previous obsession with either V. S. Naipaul or Paul Theroux. True, I regard Naipaul as one of the most enthralling writers of our time, even though the subjects he has covered—India, Africa, the putrefaction of the post-colonial world—are not ones which engage my interest or my imagination. It is him writing about them, rather than these places themselves, which fascinates me. For this reason, I regard as almost his most triumphant book the one which his...