The World Is What It Is

The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul is a biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul by Patrick French. It was published in 2008 (by Picador in the UK and Knopf in the USA). The title is the opening sentence from Naipaul's book "A Bend in the River".
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."
French deals with Naipaul's family background and his life from his birth in 1932 until his second marriage in 1996.
Reception.
The biography has been extensively reviewed: the reviewers include Paul Theroux, who wrote an earlier book about Naipaul.
The biography won unanimous praise from all quarters including Naipaul experts Teju Cole and James Wood in the New Yorker. 
Awards.
The biography was selected by the editors of the "New York Times Book Review" as one of the "Times"' "10 Best Books of 2008". It won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography, and the British literary award the Hawthornden Prize.