Originally published November 2008 Genre Biography | ||
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Awards New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year, National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography Nominations Baillie Gifford Prize, National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Similar Patrick French books, Biographies | ||
The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is a quotation from Naipaul's book A Bend in the River. The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. French deals with Naipaul's life up until his second marriage in 1996.
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Reception
The biography has been extensively reviewed: the reviewers include Paul Theroux, who wrote an earlier book about Naipaul.
Awards
The biography was selected by the editors of the New York Times Book Review as one of the Times' "10 Best Books of 2008". It won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, and the British literary award the Hawthornden Prize.