A New World Tragedy $13.95
... - Joumey to Nowhere A NEW WORLD TRAGEDY $13.95 Rarely does a book come along which so transcends its apparent subject that the reader is ultimately given something larger, richer, and more revealing than he might initially have imagined. Already published in Eng land to overwhelming acclaim (see back of jacket), Shiva Naipaul’s Journey to Nowhere is such a book — a “power ful, lucid, and beautifully written book” (The Spectator) that is destined to be one of the most controversial works of 1981. In it, this major writer takes us far beyond the events and surface details surrounding the tragedy of Jones town and the People’s Temple —and gives us his remark able, unique perspective on the deadly drama of ideas, environments, and unholy alliances that shaped those events both in Guyana and, even more significantly, in America. Journey to Nowhere is, on one level, a “brilliantly edgy safari” (New Statesman) inside the Third World itself—a place of increasing importance in our lives—and on another, a book about America, about the corrupt and corrupting ideologies and chi-chi politics of the past twenty years that enabled the Reverend Jim Jones and the Temple to flourish and grow powerful in California and Guyana. Drawing on interviews —with former members of the Temple, various officials, and such people as Buckmin ster Fuller, Huey Newton, Clark Kerr, and others —on documents, and most importantly, on his own strong, clear reactions to what he observed, Naipaul examines the Guyana of Forbes Bumham, the CIA stooge turned Third World socialist leader, whose stated ideals of socialism, racial brotherhood, and cooperative agricul tural enterprise coincided so neatly, we learn for the first time, with those of the People’s Temple — ideals that led all too easily to violence and death.
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