V.S. Naipaul discusses his most recent work of travel writing as cultural history, The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief. V.S. Naipaul will be joined in conversation this evening by his editor, George Andreou.Like all of V. S. Naipaul’s travel books, The Masque of Africa encompasses a much larger narrative and purpose: to judge the effects of belief (in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders and mythical history) upon the progress of civilization.