On his first visit to China, Nobel laureate V S Naipaul has launched the Chinese edition of his celebrated novel ‘A Bend in the River’.
The Trinidad-born British writer is in China to attend the ongoing annual Shanghai Book Fair, a major cultural highlight besides series of literature events.
‘A Bend in the River’, a 1979 novel set in an unnamed, newly-independent African country, was ranked 83rd on the Modern Library’s list of the 100 best English novels of the 20th century in 1998.
The Chinese edition of the book, published by Nanhai Publishing Co based in the southern island province of Hainan, is ready for orders at major online bookstores including Amazon.cn and Dangdang.com, but readers still need to wait for two to three days for delivery, a Xinhua news agency report said.
Asked whether he was planning to write a book on China, the Indian-origin author, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, told media on Monday that he does not have the “experience and wisdom” to do so.
“China is an enormous country,” he said.
