Different cover.

Amazon:
In this slyly funny and lavishly inventive novel–his first–V. S. Naipaul traces the unlikely career of Ganesh Ramsumair, a failed schoolteacher and impecunious village masseur who in time becomes a revered mystic, a thriving entrepreneur, and the most beloved politician in Trinidad. To understand a little better, one has to realize that in the 1940s masseurs were the island’s medical practitioners of choice. As one character observes, “I know the sort of doctors they have in Trinidad. They think nothing of killing two, three people before breakfast.”

Ganesh’s ascent is variously aided and impeded by a Dickensian cast of rogues and eccentrics. There’s his skeptical wife, Leela, whose schooling has made her excessively, fond. of; punctuation: marks!; and Leela’s father, Ramlogan, a man of startling mood changes and an ever-ready cutlass. There’s the aunt known as The Great Belcher. There are patients pursued by malign clouds or afflicted with an amorous fascination with bicycles. Witty, tender, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of Trinidad’s dusty Indian villages, The Mystic Masseur is Naipaul at his most expansive and evocative.

This will travel as a ring.

Please observe the following rules :-) :
1. When you receive the book please journal it.
2. PM the next person in line for their address, so there'll be no delay when you're ready to ship.
3. Please note your thoughts about the book in a journal entry.
4. Journal again when you've shipped it.
5. Try to keep it no longer than a month. If life gets in the way and you'll need to keep it longer, please pm me.
6. Enjoy! :-)

Edwardstreet (NZ)
book-a-neer (Australia)
Billbooks (Australia) <---book is here 4 July 2014
Blue_berry (UK)
GronnLivsstil (Norway)
back to eponine38 (USA)

On its way to Edwardstreet to kick off the ring. Hope you enjoy it!

A letter box surprise and just what I need for the 666 challenge. Will read and move on asap. Thanks.

Light read , do not understand how it won the Nobel Prize. Read for the 666 challenge as set in Trinidad in the Indian community. Gave no sense of Trinidad at all and what seems to me to be a patronising view of the Indian community.

This book arrived last Friday. I have already started reading it and should hopefully be finished soon.

Edit 23 June: Finished reading the book and will be passing it on to Billbooks by next week.

Handed over to Billbooks who's next in line.

Another book for my 666 challenge

The best thing I can say for this book was that it helped with my 666 challenge. I think Edwardstreet summed it up perfectly. Will now pass onto Blue_Berry.

Received with thanks! I have a few BR reads before this one, so I will have to hold this up a little, I hope this is not a problem.

I found this really good and entertaining read! The time and place came alive and the characters were really funny and of course they were caricatures.
I love the way Naipaul uses the language, it's near perfect, even when he is writing in the spoken dialect. Thank you for sharing this gem!

Sending to the next reader in the BR. Enjoy!

I recieved it in the mail today. I will read it as soon as I finish another book.

I read it mostly because I've got a "World Literature" project going on, but I think that I've read better books than this.

Will be returned to eponine38 as soon as I've got the address.

Sent in the mail today.

Thank you for sending this back across the ocean, Gronnlivssil! Now I'm very curious to read this, because of the mixed (mostly negative) reviews. :-)

Thanks, everyone, for participating in my first bookring!