Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey

By V. S. Naipaul

Among the Believers is V. S. Naipaul’s classic account of his journeys through Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia; ‘the believers’ are the Muslims he met on those journeys, young men and women battling to regain the original purity of their faith in the hope of restoring order to a chaotic world. It is a uniquely valuable insight into modern Islam and the comforting simplifications of religious fanaticism.

‘This book investigates the Islamic revolution and tries to understand the fundamentalist zeal that has gripped the young in Iran and other Muslim countries . . . He is a modern master.’ - Sunday Times

‘His level of perception is of the highest, and his prose has become the perfect instrument for realizing those perceptions on the page. His travel writing is perhaps the most important body of work of its kind in the second half of the century.’ - Martin Amis, author of Time's Arrow.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Mar 22, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447209362

V. S. Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession. His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.

Reviews for Among the Believers

[clfisha · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Travelling through Iran just after the revolution as well as Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia where he meets up with those caught up in the push for Islamist nations: Shias and Shi'ites, communists and apostates, youth organisers, mullahs and government officials. Asking them about their lives, looking at their hopes and dreams and always questioning their reasons.It's a fascinating time: we glimpse the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, visit Pakistan in flux, in the grip of the army and struggling to be a Islamic state and then see an Indonesia caught between old and new and looking for a way forward. Obviously it's deeply topical but not only for providing historical grounding on Islamic fundamentalism but also asking questions about that fundamentalism and ones that still haven't been answered.It's not a hatchet job, Naipaul is kind, highly intelligent, sometimes superior, honest, deeply insightful and always questioning. For those used to the uncritical simplifications of today's portrayal of Islam this a most refreshing book and because Naipul looks at the Islamic faith itself, I found I learnt much. If I have made it sound dull and worthy I apologise it's eminently readable, very human but it is serious as well as fascinating, troubling as it is enlightening and the questions it raises can be applied to all fkavours of fundamentalism.I really cannot praise this enough but maybe if you are familiar with both the faith and the history it will not be as good. Still it's worth reading as a simple, interesting, travelogue.

[jbreedlove_6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The author travels around the non-Arab Muslim world noting conditions and the relatively unknown pre-Islam and post-Islam history of these lands and peoples,

[ben_a_11 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the great non-fiction books of the past twenty years.