V.S. Naipaul discusses his most recent work of travel writing as cultural history, *The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief*. V.S. Naipaul will be joined in conversation this evening by his editor, George Andreou. Like all of V. S. Naipaul’s travel books, *The Masque of Africa* encompasses a much larger narrative and purpose: to judge the effects of belief (in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders and mythical history) upon the progress of civilization.
V.S. Naipaul has published more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including *A House for Mr. Biswas*, *A Bend in the River*, and *A Turn in the South*, and a collection of letters, *Between Father and Son*. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.
