This heartfelt and revealing account of Paul Theroux's thirty-year friendship with the legendary V. S. Naipaul is an intimate record of a literary mentorship that traces the growth of both writers' careers and explores the unique effect each had on the other. Built around exotic landscapes, anecdotes that are revealing, humorous, and melancholy, and three decades of mutual history, this is a personal account of how one develops as a writer and how a friendship waxes and wanes between two men who have set themselves on the perilous journey of a writing life. "A compact, provocative gem of a novel." Boston Globe "Vigorous and evocative . . . the kind of story you force yourself to savor slowly though you're dying to find out what happens next." The Washington Post "Both unputdownable and utterly engaging." Times Literary Supplement Paul Theroux  is the author of many highly acclaimed books. His novels include  Burma Sahib, The Bad Angel Brothers, The Lower River, Jungle Lovers,  and  The Mosquito Coast , and his renowned travel books include  Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, On the Plain of Snakes,  and  Dark Star Safari . He lives in Hawaii and on Cape Cod. 1 Famous in Kampala It is a good thing that time is a light, because so much of life is mumbling shadows and the future is just silence and darkness. But time passes, time's torch illuminates, it finds connections, it makes sense of confusion, it reveals the truth. And you hardly know the oddness of life until you have lived a little. Then you get it. You are older, looking back. For a period you understand and can say, I see it al clearly. I remember everything. It can be a brief passage, for a revelation. Only a few days after Julian first met him, he realized that what he had taken to be a smile on the face of U. V. Pradesh was really a look of exquisite, almost martyrlike suffering. The man's whole name, Urvash Vishnu Pradesh, was the slushiest Julian had ever heard, a saliva-making name like a cough drop that forced you to suck your cheeks and rinse your tongue with sudsy syllables. The fact that many people in Kampala had never heard of U. V. Pradesh made him more important in Julian's eyes. He was said to be brilliant and diffi cult. He was smaller, more frenetic than any local Indian ' the local Indians could be satirical, but they were sly. U. V. Pradesh's face, tight with disapproval, gleamed in the Uganda heat. His hair was slick from his wearing a hat. Ugandan Indians didn't wear hats, probably because Ugandan Africans sometimes did. U. V. Pradesh seldom smiled ' he suffered a great deal, or at least he said he did. Life was torture, writing was hell, and he said he hated Africa. He was afraid. Much later he explained to Julian that he felt intimidated by 'bush people.' He had 'a fear of being swallowed by the bush, a fear of people of the bush.' New to Uganda, U. V. Pradesh looked at the place with his mouth turned down in disgust. From some things he said about African passions and his own restraint, Julian had a sense in him of smothered fires. Actually, U. V. Pradesh had reason to be afraid. The Kabaka of Buganda, Sir Edward Frederick Mutesa, whom Ugandans called King Freddy, was being threatened with overthrow and death by soldiers from the northern tribes. The mess came later, and was in turn buried by greater calamities that were much sadder and more violent even than U. V. Pradesh had predicted. 'Listen to me, Julian.' Julian did nothing but listen, and he wanted U. V. Pradesh to call him Jules, as his family and friends did. 'Julian, this will go back to bush," U. V. Pradesh said, sometimes in a scolding way, sometimes as a curse. And that suffering grimace again. He walked in the slanting sun of Kampala, his shadow like a snare. "Al of it, back to bush.' Sure of something, or pleased by the sound, he repeated the phrase, a verbal tic called bis. He was always sure, so his repetitions were frequent, a little chant and echo in his speech, still with the faintest singsong of the West Indies ' U. V. Pradesh's birthplace, the setting of many of his novels ' lingering in the intonation. Julian started out knowing nothing, not any of this, not even what the initials U. V. stood for, and it was only long after that he understood. He was too young to look back, and knew only the terror of always having to look ahead at the looming darkness, and instead of reassurance seeing uncertainty and awful choices, or no choices, and risk, and doubt, feeling afraid. When Julian was young and he squinted at the big unreadable map of his life, even the magnificent light of Africa was no help. Yet he was hopeful. He felt he had what he wanted, and especially he had baraka, as they said in Swahili ' good fortune, blessings. He was a teacher, but he spent most of his time writing. It did not matter to him that he was unknown in America. He was famous in Kampala. 'Be grateful for what you have, Jules," his father had told him before he left home. "N