Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples (Vintage International)

by V. S. Naipaul

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Beyond Belief is a book about one of the more important and unsettling issues of our time. But it is not a book of opinion. It is, in the Naipaul way, a very rich and human book, full of people and their stories: stories of family, both broken and whole; of religion and nation; and of the constant struggle to create a world of virtue and prosperity in equal measure.

Islam is an Arab religion, and it makes imperial Arabizing demands on its converts. In this way it is more than a private faith; and it can become a neurosis. What has this Arab Islam done to the histories of the non-Arab Islamic states: Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia? How do the converted peoples view their past - and their future? In a follow-up to Among the Believers, his classic account of his travels through these countries, V. S. Naipaul returns, after a gap of seventeen years, to find out how and what the converted preach.

'Peerless . . . the human encounters are described minutely, superbly, picking up inconsistencies in people's tales, catching the uncertainties and the nuances . . . there is a candour to his writing, a constant precision at its heart' - Sunday Times

  • ISBN10 0330517872
  • ISBN13 9780330517874
  • Publish Date 3 September 2010 (first published 7 May 1998)
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Pan Macmillan
  • Imprint Picador
  • Format Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
  • Pages 448
  • Language English