Elif Dene Dene itibaren Nizhniy Odes, Komi Republits, Rusya, 169523
Nearly a 5 star book. Reading Naipaul's deadpan account of a long-haul journey through Asian muslim communities in the early 1980s, one pictures a tweed-clad cross between Werner Herzog and Dr. Spock, roaming around with a worn notepad. Naipaul is prone to guessing -- sometimes presumptuously -- at the inner motives of strangers he encounters, but his eye for the telling detail in such interactions is keen, and his reserved rationality rarely errs. One sees easily why his stubborn, insistent worldview -- often coldly dismissive in tone, yet hard to pin with any charge of shoddy thinking -- infuriates many on the Left; as such, he bookends someone like Chomsky, who is just as often dismissed as an intellectual charlatan, but, in the end, just as often right.