Q&A …

… Farrukh Dhondy - Interview: V S Naipaul | Literary Review | Issue 331. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

[Among the Believers] got into a lot of trouble in places like Harvard and MIT. There are some very wise people in these places who, in their wisdom, had no need to go to a country to find out what was going on there. They already knew what was to be known.

I can’t stress this strongly enough – everything I discovered and wrote was done for myself. I didn’t know what on earth I was doing at MIT, but I had accepted their invitation to speak about the book and I found they were very concerned about Iran. I remember talking about the Iranian love of blood. When a man fell bleeding in a religious demonstration, people went and dipped their hands and pieces of cloth in his blood. The people I was with refused to believe it. This couldn’t happen. Oh God! How wise they were!