Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples - Softcover

'He remains our most exhilarating explorer, with a corpus of travel writing which now surpasses that of D.H. Lawrence or Graham Greene' MARTIN AMIS 'One of the greatest living writers in the English language' ELIZABETH HARDWICK 'Naipaul writes at his precise, observational best ... brilliant' OBSERVER 'Jewel-like individual profiles are set in a filigree-work of acute physical, cultural, historical and psychological detail' FINANCIAL TIMES 'With the publication of Paul Theroux's devastating memoir of his broken friendship with V.S. Naipaul, Sir Vidia's Shadow, Naipaul's reputation has been seriously revised in recent years. His early, lyrical novels like A House for Mr. Biswas quickly gave way to a darker, increasingly pessimistic and conservative vision of postcolonial chaos and cultural dislocation, reflected in novels like Guerillas and Naipaul's early travel books, such as India: A Wounded Civilisation. One of the problems with dismissing Naipaul as a patrician cultural mandarin is that he tends to tussle with uncomfortable issues which lesser writers either avoid or romanticise. It is this desire to confront painful questions about religion, belief and belonging which characterises Naipaul's travel writing, and was a particular feature of his highly acclaimed study Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981), which chronicled his travels and observations through Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia. Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples should be read as a sequel to Among the Believers, as it relates the story of Naipaul's five-month journey to the countries he visited, and often the people he interviewed, nearly 20 years earlier. Beyond Belief is a fascinating, unrelenting story of Naipaul's travels through countries which have been subject to what Naipaul calls Islamic "conversion", and the people he encounters and their complex, problematic relations with their faith. Written with Naipaul's usual precision and elegance, Beyond Belief is a controversial and uncompromising read, which has been angrily denounced by the Muslim community. However, it is an excellent antidote to so much current travel writing which uncritically reproduces myths of the exotic orient, and should be read by anyone who wants to begin to travel throughout the non-Arabic Muslim world.' - Jerry Brotton, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW

This is a book about one of the more important and unsettling issues of our time. But it is not a book of opinion. It is - in the Naipaul way - a very rich and human book, full of people and stories. Islam is an Arab religion, and it makes imperial Arabizing demands on its converts. In this way it is more than a private faith; and it can become a neurosis. What has this Arab Islam done to the histories of Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan and Malaysia? How do the converted peoples view their past - and their future? In a follow-up to AMONG THE BELIEVERS, his classic account of his travels through these countries, V. S. Naipaul returns after a gap of seventeen years to find out how and what the converted preach. A startling and revelatory addition to the Naipaul canon, BEYOND BELIEF confirms the author's reputation as a masterful observer, a 'finder-out' of stories, as well as a magnificent teller of them. 'An admirable, thinking traveller ...a born narrator in the small or large scene. His strength lies in the tense pitch of his enquiry and in his narrative that brings people and landscape to life in flashes of telling detail' V.S. Pritchett