Sydney Morning Herald - February 8, 2014 - Peter Kenneally
Hanif Kureishi
Faber, 286pp, A$29.99
"I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."
So said V. S. Naipaul, renowned novelist and Nobel laureate, in 2011, causing an inevitable, and intended, outcry.
The outburst, one of many in a long life filled with such provocation, would not have surprised anyone who had read Philip French's 2008 biography of Naipaul, with its revelations about his treatment of the women his life.
Hanif Kureishi's new novel, The Last Word, is a fictional account of the writing of that biography: the fiction is sometimes spread thinly and sometimes laid on with an industrial-sized trowel. Ageing post-colonial novelist Mamoon Azam, with a Nobel Prize but few sales, is a simulacrum of Naipaul and the Mamoon character is portrayed with all his faults gleaming in the light. Kureishi, in his own way just as much a provocateur and ageless enfant terrible as Naipaul, enjoys them no end, while at the same time wanting to honour the depth and craft of writing such as Naipaul/Mamoon's, and mourn its loss, in a post-literate, click-bait world.
Faber, 286pp, A$29.99
"I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me." So said V. S. Naipaul, renowned novelist and Nobel laureate, in 2011, causing an inevitable, and intended, outcry.
The outburst, one of many in a long life filled with such provocation, would not have surprised anyone who had read Philip French's 2008 biography of Naipaul, with its revelations about his treatment of the women his life.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-last-word-breathless-impressions-of-a-novelist-and-his-biographer-20140206-322c9.html#ixzz2sqWMmAuZ
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