In 1950, after winning a scholarship from the government of Trinidad, V. S. Naipaul, aged seventeen, left home for the first time. Following a two-week journey by steamer, he arrived in Oxford, England, a world utterly removed from the one he had longed to escape and to which he would never really return. This extraordinary collection of letters gives us, as nothing published previously has, an intimate view of Naipaul's formative years.

It is a story of family members oceans apart, clinging to one another against the sadness of dislocation and isolation: The young Naipaul, desperate not for a degree but to become a writer and make his way in the world. His beloved sister Kamla, anxious and bewildered, away at school in India. And his melancholy but loving father, whose own broken dream of succeeding as a writer would be realized in the singular achievement of his son.

With the satisfactions of a novel, Between Father and Son portrays a deeply affecting family drama, even as it bears witness to the flowering of one of the great literary geniuses of the century.

V.S.奈保爾(1932年-)，英國移民作傢。齣生於西印度群島特立尼達的一個印度傢庭。奈保爾在西方享有盛譽，他和拉什迪、石黑一雄並稱“英國移民文學三雄”。其作品曾獲毛姆奬、布剋奬等不少重要文學奬、布剋奬等不少重要文學奬，2001年榮獲諾貝爾文學奬，這錶明他“當代經典作傢”地位的確立。重要作品有《米格爾街》、《河灣》、《抵達之謎》等。作品主要寫印度、非洲、加勒比地區人的生存狀況，錶現瞭後殖民時代的世態人心。奈保爾是繼康拉德之後又一位偉大的編年史作傢。