One of the joys of reviewing books is getting to know fellow writers, which is why I selected this book, as I admire both writers. Paul Theroux’s Sir Vidia’s Shadow is one of the most intimate, unsettling, and revealing portraits of a literary friendship. It is a study in mentorship, ambition, ego, and the corrosive effects of genius on human relationships. The book traces Theroux’s thirty‑one‑year relationship with V. S. Naipaul—beginning in a University in Kampala in the mid‑1960s, when Theroux was a young Peace Corps teacher, and Naipaul was already a rising star—and follows its evolution through admiration, dependence, […]