# Sir Vidia's Shadow

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/paul-theroux/sir-vidias-shadow/9780241950548

![Sir Vidia's Shadow](https://quivercdn.com/covers/penguin/paul-theroux/sir-vidias-shadow_978-02-4195-054-8.jpg?v=2026-04-25%2013%3A12%3A12)

- Book: [Sir Vidia's Shadow](https://www.bookquiver.com/paul-theroux/sir-vidias-shadow) ([Sir Vidia's Shadow.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/paul-theroux/sir-vidias-shadow.md))
- Authors: [Paul Theroux](https://www.bookquiver.com/paul-theroux)
- Publisher: Penguin
- ISBN: 978-02-4195-054-8
- Pages: 400
- Published: 2011-08-04
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

Both unputdownable and utterly engaging' Jonathan Raban, The Times Literary Supplement 'I started reading Theroux's Sir Vidia's Shadow , the story of his friendship with V. S. Naipaul over thirty years and five continents - its origins, development, and sad, enigmatic termination. I couldn't, as they say, put it down. I don't know of a more revealing study of the peculiar nature of friendship between professional writers, an unstable compound of empathy, solidarity and rivalry. Theroux's portrait of Naipaul . . . may be [his] finest literary creation' David Lodge, Guardian Books of the Year 'Thoroughly compelling. We can call it a memoir, or a biographical sketch, but it has more in it - more candour, more intensity, more angry puzzlement - than we would normally expect from either of these genres. I can think of no other book that renders in such merciless detail a still-living public figure' Sunday Telegraph