The Mystic Masseur

The Mystic Masseur is a comic novel by V. S. Naipaul, published in London in 1957. Set in colonial Trinidad, it follows Ganesh Ramsumair, a frustrated writer of Indian descent who rises from humble beginnings to become a successful politician, largely on the strength of his dubious reputation as a 'mystic' masseur said to cure illnesses.

The story traces Ganesh's life from his youth. After training as a teacher and briefly working in Port of Spain, the capital, he gives up the classroom and returns to his home village of Fourways, where his father has just died. Between writing and massage, he marries Leela, the daughter of a local shopkeeper, and a quarrel over her dowry strains his relations with her father. After a spell in the small rural village of Fuente Grove, where he devotes himself to reading and writing a book on Hinduism that sells poorly, Ganesh turns to spiritual healing and enjoys unexpected success.

His growing fortune lets him challenge the overcharging taxi owners of the area and, later, the corruption within the Trinidad Hindu Association, whose president is ousted. That notoriety carries him into the Legislative Council, which he wins with ease. The novel gently mocks the irony of his position: a man who wants to fight for the downtrodden ends up caught in the compromises and rules of politics.

The book was encouraged by the publisher André Deutsch, who urged Naipaul to write a novel after reading the manuscript of his short stories Miguel Street. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1958. It was the first of Naipaul's novels to be filmed, in the 2001 Merchant Ivory adaptation.