Letters Between a Father and Son

V. S. Naipaul is widely recognised as one of the greatest living authors writing in the English language. These letters written between 1949 and 1954 cover Naipaul's time at Oxford. They touchingly portray a young man overcoming financial and emotional insecurities (he suffers from a nervous breakdown during his time at University) who with great determination sets out to become a writer. The letters mainly to his father and also his sister provide a fascinating insight into his early development as a writer and offer an affecting portrait of Naipaul's father who also had authorial ambitions but who sadly died of a heart attack aged forty-five without ever being published.