There was an unexpected note of uncertainty as Nobel Prize-winning novelist V. S. Naipaul crossed the stage in Kleinhans Music Hall on Tuesday evening to open the fourth season of Babel, Just Buffalo’s distinguished and high-powered literary series.

Naipaul walked haltingly, with his wife, Nadira, by his side, and when he reached the podium, he turned to moderator Michael Kelleher and inquired: “Now what do you want me to do? . . . Oh, make a few remarks.”

Then, with his broad white goatee set off against a blue turtleneck sweater, he settled in, talking about “A House for Mr. Biswas,” the 1961 novel that Just Buffalo had recommended for reading.

“I’m quite touched,” he said, “that this book should be the subject of attention in Buffalo. It’s worried me for some time that people look at my later works and ignore this, which I consider my best book, actually.”

Remarking on the size of book, he added, “When a book is so big, you find there’s nothing you can say about it. You feel ashamed to add to its length.”

The size of it, he noted, made it hard to choose a passage to read. And hard to follow up.

“But I had the good fortune to keep going,” he said. “It’s just part of my luck, really. I now have published 30 books. It’s frightening. Nobody should publish 30 books. It’s too much.”

Naipaul read a section from “Biswas,” then sat down opposite Kelleher to answer questions, not so much about his early books but the latest one, a nonfiction work titled “The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief,” for which he traveled to several nations in Africa.

“I’m interested in the earth religions,” he said, “the ones that appear to come from the earth, from the beginnings of things. Where do these feelings of awe come from?How do they become formalized?

“This is what I wanted to investigate, and I wanted to write about Africa, not about the political problems, not the economic problems — which everybody knows about — but to come to some kind of essential truth. Whether I’ve succeeded is another matter. That’s up to my readers to tell me.”

The Babel series continues Dec. 1 with author Maxine Hong Kingston, winner of a National Book Award. The topic will be the themes of gender and ethnicity in her memoir, “The Woman Warrior.”