Hanif Kureishi is getting the last word on postmodern biography

To say this is not a book based on V S Naipaul is taking the mickey: New Statesman

Hanif Kureishi’s new novel has attracted a great deal of pre-publication notice, not because it’s a new novel by Hanif Kureishi (whose recent work has, in truth, not been particularly newsworthy) but because the story revolves around a young writer commissioned to compile the autobiography of a crotchety and celebrated literary elder. The relationship between the two men closely mirrors that between V S Naipaul and Patrick French, whose 2008 authorised biography of the Nobel laureate, The World Is What it Is, was remarkable for its unflattering candour.