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.

奈保爾(Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul)，英籍印度裔作傢。1932年8月17日齣生於中美洲特立尼達和多巴哥。18歲赴牛津大學求學，獲得文學學士學位後定居英國。曾任BBC“加勒比之聲”欄目主持人3年。遊走世界各地寫作多年，批判發展中社會的精神和物質的雙重匱乏，語多辛辣詼諧。主要作包括《靈異推拿師》（約翰·盧埃林·裏斯紀念奬），《米格爾大街》（薩莫塞特·毛姆奬），《黑暗之地》，《印度：一個傷痕纍纍的文明》，《自由國度》（1971年布剋奬），《河灣》，《半生》，《魔種》等。1990年獲英國皇室封爵；1993年，成為英國大衛·柯恩文學奬首位獲奬者，該奬旨在錶彰“尚在人世的英國作傢一生的成就”。2001年，因“作品中兼具犀利的敘述與正直的洞察，迫使我們正視那些被壓抑的曆史的存在”，被授予諾貝爾文學奬。