DOCSLIB.ORG

Naipaul – Colonial and Post Colonial Alike

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Naipaul – Colonial and Post Colonial Alike I.Boldea, C. Sigmirean, D.-M.Buda THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNICATION. Contexts and Strategies in the World of Globalism NAIPAUL – COLONIAL AND POST COLONIAL ALIKE Adina-Maria Paicu Lecturer, PhD, ”Constantin Brâncuși” University of Târgu-Jiu Abstract:This paper deals with Naipaul‟s position in the context of post-colonial theory, considering him as a member of the Indian diaspora Ŕ two approaches leading to a discussion of his Indianness. After a bio-biographical introduction to Naipaul (the man and his work) a first step would be to determine those elements in Naipaul‟s writings which allow us to consider him from the point of view of his belonging to the post-colonial literature in general, and to the Indian diasporic writing, in particular. A second step would be to establish the relationship between the biographical and autobiographical elements in Naipaul‟s travelogues, with a special stress on his Indian heritage: to what extent does Naipaul‟s Indianness inform his fiction and non-fiction? What triggers the numerous adverse reactions to some of his writings (such as his comments on Islam and the Muslim world, or even on India? What justifies an unfavourable response such as Derek Walkott‟s? Is Naipaul‟s decision to stop writing fully motivated and acceptable? Keywords:VS Naipaul, Indianness, Post-Colonial Literature, Biography and Autobiography, Indian Heritage Date: 2001, December 7. Location: Stockholm, Sweden. Event: Nobel Award ceremony. Awardee: Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (See Fig, 1). It was on this date and at this particular location that Naipaul delivered Two Worlds Ŕ his now famous Nobel acceptance speech Ŕ to the distinguished guests of the Swedish Academy. Naipaul began his lecture by citing Proust, according to whom Ŗa book is the product of a different selfŗ from the daily self of the person who wrote it. In order to understand it, we should search deep in our souls, try Ŗto reconstruct it thereŗ and then we would probably reach it. It is in the light of this statement that we should approach the biography, or even autobiography, of all those who depend on inspiration: ŖAll the details of the life and the quirks and the friendships can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of documentation, however fascinating, can take us there. The biography of a writer Ŕ or even the autobiography Ŕ will always have this incompleteness.ŗ (Naipaul, Two Worlds) He then continues with a concise presentation of the history of his native Trinidad, the adoptive home of his parents and the other indentured Indian workers in the West Indies. It is like an incursion into the colonial past and postcolonial present, an attempt at self-discovery and self-understanding, an invitation to the two worlds of his childhood Ŕ his grandmotherřs house and the world outside which, by its excluding attitude allowed the new the new arrivals to live their own private lives in their own ways, in their own Ŗfading Indiaŗ. In the world outside young Naipaul learned the rudiments of his Indian heritage Ŕ language, traditions, religion Ŕ and by meeting his Indian Muslim neighbours he became aware of the existence of the other. But the world outside was much more powerful. Even if the his elders were observing the ancient customs and religion, organizing ceremonies and readings of sacred Sanskrit texts, their Ŗancestral faith recededŗ, with a sense of not belonging to the present, and all possible links with India were severed. We are witnessing the colonizing process in a nutshell. Naipaulřs Trinidad is a cosmopolitan world, where the Hindu meets the Muslim, the 130 Section: LITERATURE I.Boldea, C. Sigmirean, D.-M.Buda THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNICATION. Contexts and Strategies in the World of Globalism Africans or other people of African descent meet the whites and the non-whites Ŕ English, Portuguese, Chinese Ŕ all surrounded by areas of darkness. Fig.1 Sir V. S. Naipaul receiving his Nobel Prize from His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the Stockholm Concert Hall, 10 December 2001. And here we come to another connection we have been looking for: the writerřs motivation of his subsequent trips to India, the source of his Indian travelogues, the essence of the present study. Naipaul testifies to his indebtedness to Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi, to Rudyard Kipling and John Mastersř books on India and the British Raj, even the romances written by women writers. (Un-)willingly we have touched upon a few of the concepts we will develop upon: biography and autobiography, the travelogue as literary genre, colonial/post-colonial literature, Orientalism, the backlash of the Empire Ŕ all meant to draw a portrait of Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, the Indian who shocked the Indians in his attempt to find his roots in the areas of darkness surrounding him and his world. Date: May, 2008. Location: Jamaica. Event: the Calabash Literary Festival. Nobel Prize Laureate Derek Walcott launches an unexpected attack upon his fellow Nobel laureate, Sir Vidia Naipaul. The unprecedented attack was dutifully mentioned in The Observer as follows: ŖA wickedly humorous poem by a Nobel prize winner has drawn more blood in a vitriolic feud between literary lions.ŗ As surprising as it may seem, Derek Walcottřs attack on his Nobel fellow triggers questions that only find answers in Naipaulřs writings. Walcott Ŕ better known for his narrative poem Omeros,deeply indebted to Homerřs Odyssey Ŕ and Naipaul Ŕ a similarly fêted novelist and travel writer Ŕ fit into the same picture of postcolonial, diasporic writers. What is, then, the reason(s) of such a fierce and apparently unjustified attack? I navigated the net with the declared purpose to find an answer to this question. After having visiting thirty Internet sites at least, I gave up, and decided to stay on the safe side, and not interfere between two giants of world literature. Nevertheless, The Mongoose, is a highly humorous, surprising attack on Naipaul, the man and the writer. It was first read at the Calabash Literary Festival in Jamaica. Walcott attacks Naipaulřs writing technique (Řeach stabbing phrase is poisonř), directly addressing two of his novels, Half a Life and Magic Seeds: ŘThe plots are forced, the prose sedate and silly / The anti-hero is a prick named Willie.ř Such a violent attack by a fellow writer invites to an investigation into the biographical elements in Naipaulřs life which could (un)justify it. Who is, then, Naipaul? A biographical account may sound rather dry: eighty years ago, on August 17, 1932, Naipaul was born in Chaguanas, Trinidad, into a Hindu family, belonging to the approximately 145,000 Indians who came to Trinidad between 1845 and 1917. About 85% of them were 131 Section: LITERATURE I.Boldea, C. Sigmirean, D.-M.Buda THE CHALLENGES OF COMMUNICATION. Contexts and Strategies in the World of Globalism Hindus, and only 15% were Brahmins. Writing about the unfriendly reception of the Indians by the local population of Trinidad, Bridget Brereton stresses the humble social position assigned to the new-comers by theŖplanters, officials, upper-class whites, educated colored and black Creoles and the black working classŗ once they became aware that the Indians were there to stay. (Brereton, 110) It is in this tropical Trinidadian space with its multi-ethnic population and multicultural atmosphere that we find the explanation of a certain degree of preoccupation with, or obsession of the marginality detected when reading his books, the writerřs feeling that his native island, or the other countries visited, and their inhabitants Ŕ Christian, Muslim, or Hindu Ŕ are totally irrelevant to the (post-) colonial centre. During his boyhood on the island, Naipaul resolved to get away in five yearsř time. He was only twelve then, and he kept his promise. At eighteen, he travelled to England to read literature at Oxford on a government scholarship, never to return. A Knight of the British Empire, Naipaul was conferred the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. In Indians Abroad: A Story from Trinidad, Namit Arora provides additional information about the Naipauls. Obviously, Naipaul was not a poor Trinidadian of Indian origin. In spite of his documented extraction from the former indentured workers who had crossed the seas for a better, well-paid for job in the colonies of the British Empire, Naipaulřs father was a journalist and a writer. His marriage into the Trinidad based influential family of politicians and writers of Capildeo. Even today, situated about eleven miles away from Port of Spain, the little town of Chaguanas boasts the so-called Lion House Ŕ Naipaulřs birthplace. Namit Arora lists at least three recurrent themes in Naipaulřs writings: (1) “post-colonial identity and nationalism”; (2) “the fiction of history and the history of fiction” and, (3) “home and belonging in a world characterized by flux, movement and cultural contact.” Arora wonders at the extent to which Trinidad informed Naipaulřs view that all those countries he had visited and written about are Ŗhalf-made Ŕ full of rage, hysteria, or mimic men Ŕ trapped in narrow identities, short on self-awareness,ŗ and questions the Ŗdysfunctionŗ of Trinidadian society which either Ŗhas constrained his way of seeing,ŗ or expanded Ŗhis powers of observation and analysis.ŗ The impact of native Trinidad on Naipaulřs achievement as a writer cannot be denied. It is an impact that awoke in him Ŗthe curiosity… for the larger world, the idea of civilization, and the idea of antiquity. It is the island which gave him to the world as a writer, which Ŗhad given me the themes that in the second half of the twentieth century had become important; had made me metropolitan in a way quite different from my first understanding of the word.ŗ (EA, 153) On the other hand, Naipaul discusses the intimate relationship between India and England, an India he equals to an Ŗun-English fantasyŗ, which the Indians of India could not possibly comprehend.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • A Psychological Study in James Joyce's Dubliners and VS
    International Conference on Shifting Paradigms in Subaltern Literature A Psychological Study in James Joyce’s Dubliners and V. S. Naipaul’s Milguel Street: A Comparative Study Dr.M.Subbiah OPEN ACCESS Director / Professor of English, BSET, Bangalore Volume : 6 James Joyce and [V]idiadhar [S] Urajprasad Naipaul are two great expatriate writers of modern times. Expatriate experience provides Special Issue : 1 creative urges to produce works of art of great power to these writers. A comparison of James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul identifies Month : September striking similarities as well as difference in perspective through the organization of narrative, the perception of individual and collective Year: 2018 Endeavour. James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul are concerned with the lives of ISSN: 2320-2645 mankind. In all their works, they write about the same thing, Joyce write great works such as Dubliners, an early part of great work, Impact Factor: 4.110 and Finnegans Wake, in which he returns to the matter of Dubliners. Similarly, Naipaul has written so many works but in his Miguel Citation: Street, he anticipated the latest autobiographical sketch Magic Seeds Subbiah, M. “A returns to the matter of Miguel Street an autobiographical fiction Psychological Study in about the life of the writer and his society. James Joyce’s Dubliners James Joyce and V.S. Naipaul are, by their own confession, and V.S.Naipaul’s committed to the people they write about. They are committed to the Milguel Street: A emergence of a new society free from external intrusion. Joyce wrote Comparative Study.” many stories defending the artistic integrity of Dubliners.
    [Show full text]
  • A Study of Place in the Novels of VS Naipaul
    A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details Towards a New Geographical Consciousness: A Study of Place in the Novels of V. S. Naipaul and J. M. Coetzee Thesis submitted by Taraneh Borbor for the qualification of Doctor of Philosophy in English literature The University of Sussex September 2010 1 In the Name of God 2 I declare that the work in this thesis was carried out in accordance with the regulations of the University of Sussex. The work is original except where indicated by special reference in the text and no part of the thesis has been submitted for any other degree. The thesis has not been presented to any other university for examination either in the United Kingdom or overseas. Signature: 3 ABSTRACT Focusing on approaches to place in selected novels by J. M. Coetzee and V. S. Naipaul, this thesis explores how postcolonial literature can be read as contributing to the reimagining of decolonised, decentred or multi-centred geographies. I will examine the ways in which selected novels by Naipaul and Coetzee engage with the sense of displacement and marginalization generated by imperial mappings of the colonial space.
    [Show full text]
  • Introduction
    I INTRODUCTION The objective of the thesis has been to explore the rootlessness in the major fictional works of V.S. Naipaul, the-Trinidad-born English author. The emphasis has been on the analysis of his writings, in which he has depicted the images of home, family and association. Inevitably, in this research work on V.S. Naipaul’s fiction, multiculturalism, homelessness (home away from home) and cultural hybridity has been explored. Naipaul has lost his roots no doubt, but he writes for his homeland. He is an expatriate author. He gives vent to his struggle to cope with the loss of tradition and makes efforts to cling to the reassurance of a homeland. Thepresent work captures the nuances of the afore-said reality. A writer of Indian origin writing in English seems to have an object, that is his and her imagination has to be there for his/her mother country. At the core of diaspora literature, the idea of the nation-state is a living reality. The diaspora literature, however, focuses on cultural states that are defined by immigration counters and stamps on one’s passport. The diaspora community in world literature is quite complex. It has shown a great mobility and adaptability as it has often been involved in a double act of migration from India to West Indies and Africa to Europe or America on account of social and political resources. Writers like Salman Rushdie, RohingtonMistry, Bahrain Mukherjee, and V.S. Naipaul write from their own experience of hanging in limbo between two identities: non-Indian and Indian.
    [Show full text]
  • THE QUESTION of CULTURAL IDENTITY in V. S. NAIPAUL's MIGUEL STREET, HALF a LIFE, and MAGIC SEEDS 2021 Phd THESIS ENGLISH LANG
    THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN V. S. NAIPAUL’S MIGUEL STREET, HALF A LIFE, AND MAGIC SEEDS 2021 PhD THESIS ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE M. Zafer AYAR Supervisor Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK i THE QUESTION OF CULTURAL IDENTITY IN V. S. NAIPAUL’S MIGUEL STREET, HALF A LIFE, AND MAGIC SEEDS M. Zafer AYAR T.C Karabuk University Institute of Graduate Programs Department of English Language and Literature Prepared as PhD Thesis Prof. Dr. A. Serdar ÖZTÜRK KARABUK June 2021 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... 1 DECLARATION ................................................................................................................ 3 FOREWORD ...................................................................................................................... 4 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 5 ÖZ (ABSTRACT IN TURKISH) ....................................................................................... 6 ARCHIVE RECORD INFORMATION ............................................................................ 7 ARŞİV KAYIT BİLGİLERİ (in Turkish) .......................................................................... 8 ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................ 9 INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • V.S. Naipaul's Half a Life, Magic Seeds and Globalisation1
    V.S. Naipaul’s Half a life, Magic seeds and globalisation1 Robert Balfour School of Languages, Literacies, Media & Drama Education University of KwaZulu-Natal DURBAN E-mail: [email protected] Abstract V.S. Naipaul’s Half a life, Magic seeds and globalisation Naipaul’s work has been described as an examination of “the clash between belief and unbelief, the unravelling of the British Empire, the migration of peoples” (Donadio, 2005). Contro- versial both in terms of his perceptions of postcolonial nations (Said, 1978) and of postcolonial literary criticism (King, 1993), Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, at an earlier point declared the novel dead and postcolonial nations half-baked. Despite his provocative pronouncements and his readers’ criticisms (the most stringent and extensive critique by Nixon (1992)), Naipaul is too important to be marginalised. While major contemporaries have ceased to be productive (Walcott, Ondaatje, Soyinka) Naipaul’s voice continues to be heard, his tones new, his perspective flexible enough to apprehend new phenomena in culture and politics, and his critique sufficiently disturbing to merit critical attention. Despite accusations of being a postcolonial lackey, a reactionary, a racist, and a misogynist, he has survived, and not only because of his elegant prose. My purpose in this article is to explore his 21st century writing as a critical understanding of the postcolonial phenomenon of globalisation as a cultural and economic force which is a development and consequence of imperialism and decolo- nisation. I shall argue that as a phenomenon, globalisation 1 I am grateful for the thoughtful and thorough comments made by the reviewers of this article to bring greater clarity and purpose to my writing.
    [Show full text]
  • Dooley 1 1 Naipaul's 'Fraudulent' London Novel: Mr Stone and The
    Dooley 1 Naipaul’s ‘Fraudulent’ London Novel: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion1 Gillian Dooley, Flinders University Between A House for Mr Biswas (1961) and The Mimic Men (1967) V.S. Naipaul produced a novel which is less well-known than either. Critical attention has been lavished on these two novels, and justly so, but the differences in style and subject matter of Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (1963) account for a large disparity in the treatment of this novel by critics. A search in the Modern Languages Association Bibliography for critical articles on The Mimic Men, for example, produces forty-one results, whereas a corresponding search for articles about Mr Stone and the Knights Companion produces only five.2 Mr Stone is a short, spare novel with a rich vein of melancholic comedy. Unlike The Mimic Men, it contains little philosophical rumination for a critic to dissect. Another reason for its lack of critical attention could be that it deals, superficially at least, with subjects unlike those Naipaul has treated either before or since. Mr Biswas and the three novels leading up to it were set in Trinidad. The Mimic Men was set partly in London but the main action takes place in the Caribbean. But Mr Stone is set entirely in England and all the characters are English. There is no obvious ‘post-colonial’ angle to engage the many critics who tend to concentrate on political and historical, rather than formal and stylistic, dimensions in their study of Naipaul’s work. And the point of view in this novel is detached and none of the characters can easily be identified with the author: Naipaul himself was concerned that by obscuring his presence as narrator in the novel he betrayed or belied his origins and situation.
    [Show full text]
  • Dooley Final1
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Flinders Academic Commons { PAGE } ‘Naipaul’s Women.’ South Asian Review, Vol 26, no. 1, November 2005. Naipaul’s Women Gillian Dooley Flinders University During his visit to Australia in 2001, Naipaul was asked in a radio interview for his opinion of the feminist movement. His reply was hardly a surprise: “I haven’t thought about it, not that I wish to avoid the issue” (Cathcart). Just a few months later, his response to a debate at a literary festival between Indian women writers on feminist issues was less temperate: “My life is short. I can’t listen to banality. This thing about colonialism, this thing about gender oppression, the very word oppression irritates me” (Gibbons). Leaving aside the question of what makes Naipaul behave badly on such occasions, he has certainly been consistently irritated by any kind of political generalization. His normal reaction to ideology has always been to resist its spell, and although the behavior of those who have succumbed is a frequent subject of both his fiction and his non-fiction, he has almost entirely avoided any examination of feminists or feminism. Nevertheless, individual women are significant enough in his work to merit close attention. In reaction to Naipaul’s three novels of the 1970s,1 at least six articles were published on women and sexuality in his fiction.2 Most of these critics label Naipaul a misogynist, either explicitly or implicitly. For example, Helen Pyne-Timothy claims that “Naipaul has in these works provided a view of women which is extremely harsh, moralistic and judgmental” (306).
    [Show full text]
  • The Network of Intertextual Relations in Naipaul's Half a Life and Magic Seeds
    UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL INSTITUTO DE LETRAS PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS LITERATURAS DE LÌNGUA INGLESA The Network of Intertextual Relations in Naipaul's Half a Life and Magic Seeds Dissertação submetida à Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Letras na ênfase Literaturas de Língua Inglesa Mestranda: Profa. Larissa Rohde Orientadora: Profa. Dra. Sandra Sirangelo Maggio Porto Alegre Dezembro, 2005 FICHA CATALOGRÁFICA ROHDE, Larissa The Network of Intertextual Relations in Naipaul's Half a Life and Magic Seeds Larissa Rohde Porto Alegre: UFRGS, Instituto de Letras, 2005. 245 p. Dissertação (Mestrado – Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras) Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. 1. Literatura de língua inglesa. 2. Crítica literária. 3. V. S. Naipaul. 4. Half a Life 5. Magic Seeds 6. Intertextualidade Agradecimentos: CAPES, pela concessão de auxílio financeiro. Profª Sandra Maggio, pelo otimismo, generosidade e atenção. Membros da banca examinadora, pelo interesse na leitura do trabalho. Régis Pizzato, pela formatação eletrônica. Agradeço também aos professores e colegas que, direta ou indiretamente, colaboraram para a realização desta pesquisa. RESUMO Esta dissertação mapeia a rede de relações intertextuais em Half a Life (2001) e sua continuação Magic Seeds (2004), os romances mais recentes do Prêmio Nobel de Literatura de 2001, V. S. Naipaul, como contribuição para o estudo da obra do autor. A noção de intertextualidade permeia os estudos literários, e o termo tem sido largamente empregado desde que foi cunhado por Julia Kristeva nos anos sessenta. Desde então as mais variadas, e muitas vezes divergentes, teorias sobre intertextualidade compartilham a idéia de que um texto só adquire significado pleno na interação com outros textos.
    [Show full text]
  • V S Naipaul: an Author with a Contentious Intellect
    V S Naipaul: An Author with a Contentious Intellect Ajay K. Chaubrey Department of Sciences and Humanities National Institute of Technology, Uttarakand Abstract This article examines the reception of V.S. Naipaul’s writings with emphasis on responses to his work in Indian contexts that react to his often controversial statements about India and Islam. It looks at him in terms of his rich immigrant background and tries to see both the positive and negative aspects of the discussions he has stirred. Keywords: V.S. Naipaul, India, West Indies, Islam “…Naipaul has become Sir V S Naipaul, an extremely famous and, it must be said, very talented writer whose novels and non- fiction (mostly travel books) have established his reputation as one of the truly celebrated, justly well-known figures in world literature today.” (Edward Said) “There are three great trade routes along which the Naipaul controversies steer. The first is his depiction of India….Islam is the second controversy….The third controversy is the most bitter: that in his travel books about the Caribbean, and Africa, Naipaul has written about black people in ways no white man could ever have got away with.” (Arvind Adiga) Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is one of the most prominent authors of the twentieth century and now of the twenty first. His scholarship on history, culture, civilisation and ethnicity—a journalistic approach to unearth the past—has been appreciated even by his critics. He has been successful not merely by being a good author but also by producing a diatribe against “third world countries”—Trinidad, a place of his birth and India, a place of his ancestors— both of which he has often described as ‘half-baked societies’ that have led him to be the butt of controversies.
    [Show full text]
  • Postcolonial Literatures in English
    The Cambridge Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures in English The past century has witnessed an extraordinary flowering of fiction, poetry and drama from countries previously colonised by Britain, an output which has changed the map of English literature. This introduction, from a leading figure in the field, explores a wide range of Anglophone postcolonial writing from Africa, Australia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland and Britain. Lyn Innes compares the ways in which authors shape communal identities and interrogate the values and representations of peoples in newly independent nations. Placing its emphasis on literary rather than theoretical texts, this book offers detailed discussion of many internationally renowned authors, including Chinua Achebe, James Joyce, Les Murray, Salman Rushdie and Derek Walcott. It also includes historical surveys of the main countries discussed, a glossary, and biographical notes on major authors. Lyn Innes provides a rich and subtle guide to an array of authors and texts from a wide range of sites. C. L. Innes is Emeritus Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent. She is the author of, among other books, AHistory of Black and Asian Writing in Britain (Cambridge, 2002). Cambridge Introductions to Literature This series is designed to introduce students to key topics and authors. Accessible and lively, these introductions will also appeal to readers who want to broaden their understanding of the books and authors they enjoy. r Ideal for students, teachers, and lecturers r Concise, yet packed with essential information r Keysuggestions for further reading Titles in this series: Christopher Balme The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies Eric Bulson The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce Warren Chernaik The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s History Plays John Xiros Cooper The Cambridge Introduction to T.
    [Show full text]
  • Isbn Title Sub Title Author Imprint Binding Price Qty
    FICTION ISBN TITLE SUB TITLE AUTHOR IMPRINT BINDING PRICE QTY 9789382616283 Junglezen Sheru Samarpan Macmillan Paperback 150 9789382616122 The Treasure of Kafur Aroon Raman Pan Paperback 299 9788192398006 The Shadow Throne Aroon Raman Pan Paperback 250 9789382616610 Skyfire Aroon Raman Pan Paperback TBA Mothers, Lovers and 9789382616092 Other Strangers Bhaichand Patel Pan Paperback 299 9781447222859 The Tattooed Fakir Biman Nath Pan Paperback 299 9789382616139 Lamplight Paranormal Kankana Basu Pan Paperback 250 Stories from the Hinterlands Dead in a Mumbai Madhumita 9789382616177 Minute Bhattacharyya Pan Paperback 299 Madhumita 9788192398013 The Masala Murder Bhattacharyya Pan Paperback 299 100 Ways to Madhumita 9789382616382 Disappear in Goa Bhattacharyya Pan Paperback 299 Omar Shahid 9789382616146 The Prisoner Hamid Pan Paperback 350 Omar Shahid 9789382616443 The Spinner's Tale Hamid Pan Paperback TBA 9789382616054 I Kissed a Frog Rupa Gulab Pan Paperback 250 9789382616016 The Last War Sandipan Deb Pan Paperback 299 Sangeeta 9789382616320 Vikraal Bahadur Pan Paperback 399 Sangeeta 9780330542913 Jaal Bahadur Pan Paperback 299 Sharath 9789382616573 Nari komarraju Pan Paperback TBA Picador 9789382616337 The Way Things Were Aatish Taseer India Hardback 699 Picador 9780330450751 Home Products Amitava Kumar India Paperback 399 Picador 9789382616078 Vanity Bagh Anees Salim India Hardback 499 Picador 9789382616412 Vanity Bagh Anees Salim India Paperback 299 Picador 9781447238072 Chaos Theory Anuvab Pal India Paperback 499 Between the Picador
    [Show full text]
  • Self-Identity and Globalization in VS Naipaul's Half a Life and Magic Seeds
    LANGUAGE IN INDIA Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow Volume 14:5 May 2014 ISSN 1930-2940 Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D. Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D. Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D. B. A. Sharada, Ph.D. A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D. Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D. Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D. S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D. G. Baskaran, Ph.D. L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D. C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics) Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A. Self-Identity and Globalization in V. S. Naipaul’s Half a Life and Magic Seeds K. Mehanathan, M.A., M.Phil., PGDTE Rootlessness and Crisis of Identity The theme of rootlessness and consequent crisis of identity has been a recurring one in the literature of Diaspora and V.S. Naipaul seems to be a champion of this issue. In awarding Naipaul the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001, the Swedish Academy citation Language in India www.languageinindia.com ISSN 1930-2940 14:5 May 2014 K. Mehanathan, M.A., M.Phil., PGDTE Self-Identity and Globalization in V. S. Naipaul’s Half a Life and Magic Seeds 169 admires his work "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”. He is regarded a prophet, a soothsayer, a doom watcher and a teller of unpalatable truths. His heroes are always in search of a more dignified life and they become acutely aware of their helplessness in achieving the goals they set for themselves. They remain unhoused, displaced, uprooted with no distinct place called ‘home’ to be proud of, and are therefore located on the margins of sifting identities.
    [Show full text]