It is a travelogue detailing Naipaul's trip through India in the early sixties.

Widely considered a passionate but pessimistic work, An Area of Darkness conveys the sense of disillusionment which the author experiences on his first visit to India in the sixties, marked with poverty and corruption.

[1] The book is also considered Naipaul's reckoning with his ancestral homeland and a sharp chronicle of his travels through India of the sixties encountering distressing poverty in the slums, corrupt government workers in the cities, to the ethereal beauty of the Himalayas, covering a vast canvas of the subcontinent.

[2] According to some book reviewers, the title of the book, An Area of Darkness, was not so much a reference to India of the sixties, as to Naipaul's feelings of distress and anxiety encountering poverty and suffering in India.

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