Патрик Френч – лучшие книги

...Тибет. Обитель сокровенной мудрости, сказочная в своем подвижническом, отшельническом просветлении. Священная Шамбала Блаватской и Рерихов... Шангри-Ла Дж. Хилтона... Край, в котором каждый камень исполнен Истинного Знания...

Sir Francis Younghusband was the last of the great imperialists--a dashing adventurer, who in 1903 single-handedly invaded Tibet, wiped out its entire army, and then became a mystic. Admired by H.G Wells and Bertrand Russell, he launched early assaults on Mt. Everest, held the world record for the 300-yard dash, was the first European since Marco Polo to travel from Peking to Central Asia, discovered the source of the Indus, and, as a spy, his presumed death nearly sparked an Indo-Russian war. The quest to discover this man led Patrick French from the Himalayas to Kashmir and into Tibet in search of clues.

One of this century's greatest surprises has been the economic and social revolution in India. What is the real nature of this rapid change, and where are its roots? "India" takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, geographically from the remote Buddhist north to the tropical far south and socially from the new multi-millionaires to the many Indians still crushed by caste and poverty. This is the book for anyone wanting to get to grips with this extraordinary country - and French, with his in-depth knowledge and understanding of India, is perfectly placed to write it.

Since V. S. Naipaul left his Caribbean birthplace at the age of seventeen, his improbable life has followed the global movement of peoples, whose preeminent literary chronicler he has become. In The World Is What It Is, Patrick French offers the first authoritative biography of the controversial Nobel laureate, whose only stated ambition was greatness as a writer, in pursuit of which goal nothing else was sacred.

Beginning with a richly detailed portrait of Naipaul's childhood in colonial Trinidad, French gives us the boy born to an Indian family, the displaced soul in a displaced community, who by dint of talent and ambition finds the only imaginable way out: a scholarship to Oxford. London in the 1950s offers hope and his first literary success, but homesickness and depression almost defeat Vidia, his narrow escape aided by Patricia Hale, an Englishwoman who will devote herself to his work and well-being. She will stand by him, sometimes tenuously, for more than four decades, even as Naipaul embarks on a twenty-four-year affair, which will awaken half-dead passions and feed perhaps his greatest wave of dizzying creativity. Amid this harrowing emotional life, French traces the course of the fierce visionary impulse underlying Naipaul's singular power, a gift to produce masterpieces of fiction and nonfiction.

Informed by exclusive access to V. S. Naipaul's private papers and personal recollections, and by great feeling for his formidable body of work, French's revelatory biography does full justice to an enigmatic genius.