If often feels like Shiva Naipaul, maybe in his own mind, is the only truth-teller left during his investigation into the Jonestown massacre, Journey to Nowhere, a brand-new edition of which has just been published by Outsider Editions. Throughout, he’s stymied by officialdom, annoyed by witnesses and buffered and bullied by his own cynicism. “The ideas float like ghosts. So do the men and women who cling to the ideas. A swirling vapour of assorted ‘idealisms’ - ecology, feminism, heightened consciousness - clouds the brain. The gurus wait with open arms”. Which leads the reader to ask, does he have the balance and openness to find answers to the question, what made a Jim Jones? Or what attracted black, white, young and old to Jones’s People’s Temple and eventually led to nine hundred deaths in Guyana in 1978? As the questions multiply Naipaul begins to become overwhelmed by a California dreaming of the new humanism (“which dehumanises us”), alternative therapies and eco consciousness. Increasingly bewildered and haunted he relentlessly tramps through this personal hellscape losing hope, page after disheartening page. Is Jim Jones, and others like him, really the inevitable oasis at the end of the road? With a superb introduction by Hua Hsu, Journey to Nowhere is the kind of fogeyish, chin-scratcher that some people will love and some people will absolutely loathe. As Hsu concludes in his introduction, “The beautiful inertia of his writing makes some of his conclusions feel irresistible, but do they have to be?”

Journey to Nowhere – Shiva Naipaul – Publ. by Outsider Editions - £18.99

Steven Long