[In the following review, King focuses on Theroux's descriptions of V. S. Naipaul as a man and as a writer in Sir Vidia's Shadow.]

Sir Vidia's Shadow is subtitled A Friendship Across Five Continents and concerns Paul Theroux's relationship with V. S. Naipaul since 1966, when Theroux, a university lecturer in Uganda, met Naipaul, who had been sent by an American foundation as a visiting professor, writer, or intellectual—which is not clear, as Naipaul refused to teach and used the time for his own writing, finishing The Mimic Men (1967). This appears to have been the most rewarding time of the friendship between the two. Eleven years younger, Theroux, who was in love with Africa and an African woman, was Naipaul's opposite, guide, and pupil. Theroux was part of the Transition circle, but not otherwise known or much published. Naipaul was already the author of prizewinning novels, famous for A House for Mr Biswas (1961), although apparently unknown to the local English Department and unread by those whom he met, with the exception of a cranky Englishman, an old India hand who had retired to Kenya to run a hotel and insulted everyone except Naipaul, whose novels he had read and admired. Naipaul completed The Mimic Men at his hotel, and used the hotel keeper and his inn in In a Free State, a novella partly based on a long car ride Theroux and Naipaul took together at the time when Milton Obote attacked the Kabaka of Buganda, destroying the traditional power structure that had survived British colonialism, so that the new national government would be the only source of power.

Naipaul taught Theroux how to be a writer, made him revise an article ten times, then told him to reduce it by half. He insisted on honesty, transparency, making each word clear, avoiding tricks and mannerisms. Naipaul believed in Theroux, treated him as a younger writer learning how to write. Such faith was important to Theroux; Naipaul looked down on almost everyone else, white or black, as inferior. He viewed whites in Africa as second-rate, the men probably homosexuals seeking black youths, the Africans still primitives with a veneer of Western culture which would soon be lost. Naipaul's concern was with the Indians who were making no plans for the consequence of African rule and seemed unaware that soon they would be expelled, their wealth confiscated.

Sir Vidia's Shadow is a fascinating book, fascinating for such biographical details as Naipaul's London life, his ignoring British writers as inferior or bores, his mockery of and social climbing among the titled, his poor finances, and his championing of Theroux until Theroux was in a position to help him, after which Naipaul seemed resentful. The friendship is broken after Naipaul's second marriage for reasons that are not clear, but probably as the result of Naipaul's second wife and of Naipaul's feeling upstaged by Theroux. Ignored and insulted, Theroux discovers he has a book about this thirty-year relationship, a book that at times appears to be a vengeful caricature, at times imitates Naipaul's own early satires, at times reads like a still-impressed younger writer thanking an elder for teaching him how to write, at times like a competition. Part scandal, part an attempt to shout that the emperor has no clothes, a history of an infatuation, an Oedipal attempt to kill the father, Sir Vidia's Shadow contains some of the best descriptions of Naipaul's writings I have read. Theroux still seems conflicted; his book is uneven but marvelous reading.