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The book is about V. S. Naipaul who was born in Trinidad in 1932. At the age of 18, Naipaul left Trinidad on a scholarship to study literature at Oxford. He never returned to live in Trinidad. His first book was published in 1956, and by the time Trinidad achieved political independence in 1962, he had published four books and was firmly established as a writer in England. By the time Trinidad became a republic in 1976, Naipaul had written 13 books and had travelled through much of the postcolonial world. This book highlights how Trinidad and Naipaul were bound in a love-hate relationship where Naipaul continued to pass Trinidad off as a cynical island where “nothing was created” while Trinidad had its share by laying back a claim on him and his writing. It is generally perceived that Naipaul shunned his place of birth as he called his birth in Trinidad a “mistake,” Trinidad an “unimportant, uncreative, cynical” place and the Caribbean as the “Third World’s Third World.” His refusal to acknowledge Trinidad in his initial response to receiving the Nobel Prize added insult to injury. Yet, he was deeply bound to the island of Trinidad and his roots in the Indo-Trinidadian community. This book makes Naipaul’s connection to Trinidad more than evident and as such adds to the present body of knowledge.
In this interesting book, Misra makes a convincing case that V. S. Naipaul was ‘typically Trinidadian’ in his published works and in the persona that he constructed over the decades of his writing life. She shows how Trinidad’s unique society, and Naipaul’s birth family, upbringing and youth, shaped all his work, not only the eight novels and several non-fiction books set in or about Trinidad but also the books on the Islamic world, Africa and England. — Bridget Brereton, Emerita Professor of History, The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago.
Introduction; Chapter 1: Early Fiction of the 1950s: The Trinidad Years The Mystic Masseur ; The Suffrage of Elvira; Miguel Street; A House for Mr Biswas; Chapter 2: The Interloper in Travel Writing: The Middle Passage; An Area of Darkness; Chapter 3: Mimicry and Experiments of the 1960s: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion; A Flag on the Island; The Mimic Men; The Loss of El Dorado; Chapter 4: Displacement Across Borders in the 1970s, 4.1 The Booker Prize and the Black Power Movement & 4.2 In a Free State; The Return of Eva Perón, with The Killings in Trinidad; Guerrillas; India: A Wounded Civilisation; A Bend in the River; Chapter 5: The Imperial Vision of the 1980s: Among the Believers; Finding the Centre; The Enigma of Arrival; A Turn in the South; Chapter 6: Redemptive Journeys in the 1990s: India: A Million Mutinies Now; A Way in the World; Beyond Belief; Letters between a Father and Son; Chapter 7: Composing again in the 2000s: Half A Life; Magic Seeds; A Writer’s People; The Masque of Africa; Conclusions; Works Cited