V.S. Naipaul: The Masque of Africa

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.