Much has changed since V. S. Naipaul’s first trip to India and this fascinating account of his return journey focuses on India’s development since independence.Taking an anti-clockwise journey around the metropolises of India – including Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, and Delhi – Naipaul offers a kaleidoscopic, layered travelogue, encompassing a wide collage of religions, castes, and classes at a time when the percolating ideas of freedom threatened to shake loose the old ways. The brilliance of the book lies in Naipaul’s decision to approach this shifting, changing land from a variety of perspectives: the author humbly recedes, allowing the Indians to tell the stories of their own lives, and a dynamic oral history of India emerges before our eyes.‘With this book he may well have written his own enduring monument, in prose at once stirring and intensely personal, distinguished both by style and critical acumen’ – Financial Times