New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1975
a presentation copy to American jazz critic Albert Murray
One of the Nobel prize winning author's most celebrated works, Guerillas is set on an unnamed Caribbean island with an ethnically mixed population that's dominated by the postcolonial white British. It is likely that inspiration was largely drawn from his native Trinidad with aspects of the plot based on the revolutionary figure Michael X. The novel's rising suspense leads to a violent climax which Paul Theorux described in the New York Times as 'a series of shocks, like a shroud, slowly unwound from a bloody corpse, showing the damaged, and familiar face last'.
Naipaul recalls in A Turn in the South, 'I was given the name of a writer who had been educated at Tuskegee, Al Murray. He was, or had been, a protégé of Ralph Ellison...His sitting room was full of books and records...the books were a serious collection of twentieth-century American writing in first or very early editions.' Al Murray would later say, 'Naipaul is like a satellite in orbit. He's got an objectivity that no one else has, and he knows that the past is an albatross.' Inscribed, literary association copies of Naipaul's works are distinctly uncommon.
First edition, first printing; 8vo (22 x 14.5 cm); presentation copy, signed 'V.S. Naipaul for Al Murray'; quarter black cloth over black boards, embossed title design to upper board, title in gilt to spine, with the dust jacket, a little sunned, very slight worn, a very good copy.
One of the Nobel prize winning author's most celebrated works, Guerillas is set on an unnamed Caribbean island with an ethnically mixed population that's dominated by the postcolonial white British. It is likely that inspiration was largely drawn from his native Trinidad with aspects of the plot based on the revolutionary figure Michael X. The novel's rising suspense leads to a violent climax which Paul Theorux described in the New York Times as 'a series of shocks, like a shroud, slowly unwound from a bloody corpse, showing the damaged, and familiar face last'.
Naipaul recalls in A Turn in the South, 'I was given the name of a writer who had been educated at Tuskegee, Al Murray. He was, or had been, a protégé of Ralph Ellison...His sitting room was full of books and records...the books were a serious collection of twentieth-century American writing in first or very early editions.' Al Murray would later say, 'Naipaul is like a satellite in orbit. He's got an objectivity that no one else has, and he knows that the past is an albatross.' Inscribed, literary association copies of Naipaul's works are distinctly uncommon.
First edition, first printing; 8vo (22 x 14.5 cm); presentation copy, signed 'V.S. Naipaul for Al Murray'; quarter black cloth over black boards, embossed title design to upper board, title in gilt to spine, with the dust jacket, a little sunned, very slight worn, a very good copy.
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