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Home , Albert Gomes, Among the Believers, An Area of Darkness, A Flag on the Island, A House for Mr Biswas, A Turn in the South

Appendix A: Naipaul’s Family, and

Naipaul’s fiction makes imaginative use of actual people. His father Seepersad (1906–53) is the model for Mr Biswas. After Seepersad’s father died when he was six years old, Seepersad and his impoverished mother became dependent on his mother’s sister (Tara of Biswas) and her wealthy husband (Ajodha) who owned rum shops, taxis and other busi- nesses. After some schooling Seepersad became a sign-painter; he painted a sign for the general store connected to Lion House (Hanuman House in Biswas) owned by the Capildeos (the Tulsis) of and married Bropatie Capildeo (Shama). Although his seven children were born in Lion House he usually resided elsewhere. After he had painted advertising signs for the Trinidad Guardian (the Sentinel in Biswas), the editor allowed him to submit articles, then hired him as a reporter. As Seepersad had a highly developed sense of humour his reports and interviews made him well known. After several moves Seepersad became the newspaper’s Chaguanas correspondent but lived by himself in a wooden house away from Lion House until he had a mental collapse – possibly influenced by his resig- nation from the paper after the editor had been fired and its policy changed, and possibly by a fierce quarrel with the very orthodox Hindu Capildeos about religious reform. After his nervous breakdown he became an overseer on a Capildeo estate (Green Vale) and then a shopkeeper (The Chase). He rejoined the Guardian, and moved to where for ten years he lived in various houses owned by the Capildeos before acquiring his own house (the Sikkim Street house). He spent three years with a new Department of Social Welfare, after which the Department was abolished and he returned again to the Guardian, although he lost his pension rights. He died of a heart attack during 1953 when V. S. Naipaul was studying in . There is a specific family context to The Mimic Men and to the descriptions of Trinidadian politics in Naipaul’s early fiction from The Mystic Masseur to The Mimic Men. It concerns his mother’s side of the family. The Capildeos were descended from a minor Indian aristocrat and pundit who was kidnapped in Calcutta and sent to Trinidad as an indentured labourer. There he married Rosalie Soogee Gobin (Mrs Tulsi in Biswas) with whom he had nine daughters and two sons before he died (1925). Rudranath, the younger son, attended Queen’s Royal College, where he was (like Ganesh in The Mystic Masseur) for a time, as a rural Indian, a misfit who studied

207 208 Appendix A hard but did not do well, and after graduation taught. He (like Owad of Biswas) went to university in England where he was elected head of several student organizations, read the Statesman and became an avid supporter of Soviet Communism. He returned to Trinidad where he lived with his mother while he and his elder brother, Sambhoonath (Shekhar of Biswas) became involved in one of the new political parties (various details are used in The Mystic Masseur where Rudranath is a source for Indarsingh). Rudranath returned to England, for postgraduate research, then became the leader of the DLP when the Trinidadian opposition needed a well-known educated Indian to oppose ’ PNM. Although predominantly Indian the DLP was multiracial and for a time included Uriah Butler and among its leadership. Because of its mixed racial leadership, most of whom were the older, flamboyant, independent politicians, it was also unstable and when an Indian quit in 1957 Butler declared that all Indians were traitors. (Ralph Singh of The Mimic Men) was wealthy, politi- cally ineffective, divided his time between England and Trinidad, wrote spiritualistic autobiographies (like The Mystic Masseur and Singh in The Mimic Men) but won a majority in the 1958 election. As Williams saw his PNM leading Trinidad to independence and hoped to head a federation, both of which the Indians opposed as leading to black domina- tion, he accused the Indians of treason, of being a ‘hostile and recalcitrant minority’, the ‘greatest danger facing the country’, and violence followed. The 1961 elections, which the PNM won, were particularly brutal with PNM supporters looting Indian shops and homes while the predominantly black police made house by house searches for arms in Indian areas. Rudranath foolishly declared the Indians would overthrow the government by force but did nothing. Williams declared a state of emergency. Rudranath broke down and returned to England where he lived in Brighton. Gomes also soon fled.81 This is part of the material which has been transformed in The Mimic Men. Appendix B: Naipaul, Trinidad, Guyana and

Trinidad and Guyana are among the new nations whose populations are not native and where the coming of independence created mutual fears of dominance between opposing ethnic groups. In nearby Guyana during the 1950s the nationalist movement split into rival Indian and black parties; the Indian socialists who won the elections were twice deposed, first by the British and later with American help. There were bloody inter-racial riots and the country was long ruled by a tyrannical black nationalist govern- ment which led it to economic ruin and refused to hold fair elections. The period between 1946 and 1961 was particularly bad in Trinidad as the black urban population, led by Eric Williams, was pressing for complete independence from England and for a Trinidadian-led Caribbean Federation, while the Indian population opposed both, fearing domination by black majorities. Eric Williams, who led the PNM, was charismatic, tough, unscrupulous and influenced by the Marxist model of a one-party state. Having led Trinidad towards independence he believed opposition was treasonable. Although he spoke of the need for a multiracial Trinidad he used a rhetoric of religious deliverance in which national freedom meant government by those of African descent. When in power he appointed no Hindu Indians to the senior positions and, according to C. L. R. James, some of the leadership of Williams’s PNM were fanatically anti-Hindu Indian (although the PNM did include Muslim Indians).82 Those who in Europe and the United States favoured independence and black rule in Africa and the Caribbean seldom spoke up against the mistreatment of Indians, and sometimes justified it by arguing that the Indians were an alien entrepre- neurial class who blocked black advancement into business. (Notice the comments of Linda and Bobby about Indian shopkeepers in ‘’.) Naipaul distinguishes between nations, such as the United States and England, where those of African descent are a minority subject to discrimination and nations where they discriminate against others or, as in parts of Africa, among themselves.

209 Notes

INTRODUCTION

1. ‘n.b’, TLS, 19 July 2002, 16. 2. Many of Naipaul’s sources and allusions are mentioned in John Thieme, The Web of Allusions (: Hansib, 1988). 3. The factual basis of many of the writings can be found in Landeg White, V. S. Naipaul (London: Macmillan, 1975). 4. V. S. Naipaul, Between Father and Son/Family Letters, ed. Gillon Aitken (London: Little Brown, 2000). 5. Rhonda Cobham, ‘The Caribbean Voices Programme and the Development of West Indian Short Fiction: 1945–1958’ in The Story Must Be Told: Short Narrative Prose in the New English Literature, Peter O. Stummer ed. (Würzburg: Konigshausen & Neuman, 1986), 146–60. 6. Paul Theroux, Sir Vidia’s Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). 7. V. S. Naipaul, ‘Our Universal Civilization’, The New York Review of Books (31 January 1991), 22–5. 8. See Ben Whitaker, ed., The Fourth World. Victims of Group Oppression (New York: Schocken, 1973). The situation for Indians became worse in Uganda, Zaire and Fiji. 9. He regards both as exiles wounded by their ‘homes’, who turned to travel writing. Arnold Rampersad, ‘V. S. Naipaul: Turning in the South’, Raritan, 20:1 (Summer 1990), 24–47; 45–6. 10. Stephen Schiff, ‘The Ultimate Exile’, The New Yorker (23 May 1994), 60–71. 11. See Bruce King, ed., West Indian Literature (London: Macmillan, 1979, enlarged 1995); Kenneth Ramchand, The West Indian Novel and its Background (London: Faber, 1970); Louis James, in English (London and New York: Longman, 1999). 12. See Naipaul’s ‘Foreword’ to The Adventures of Gurudeva and other Stories (London: Deutsch, 1976); and Reinhard W. Sander, The Trinidad Awakening: West Indian Literature of the Nineteen-Thirties (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 150. 13. The Adventures, 9–10.

MIGUEL STREET, THE MYSTIC MASSEUR AND

14. Landeg White, V. S. Naipaul (London: Macmillan, 1975), 50. Also see Earl Lovelace, The Dragon Can’t Dance (Burnt Mill, Harlow: Longman Caribbean Writers Series, 1986; first published 1979), 23.

210 Notes 211

15. Ivar Oxaal, Black Intellectuals Come to Power. The Rise of Creole Nationalism in (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1968), 100–1. As late as 1961 PNM posters described Eric Williams as Moses II. The use of Messianic rhetoric was earlier associated with Uriah Butler. 16. For the Capildeos see Oxaal’s Black Intellectuals Come to Power, 160–80. 17. George Lamming also regards the West Indian black community as absurdly mimicking the English and as racially sensitive. See Lamming, ‘A Wedding in the Spring’, Commonwealth Short Stories, Anna Rutherford and Donald Hannah, eds (London: Edward Arnold, 1971; Macmillan, 1979), 44–56. 18. The People’s National Movement was led by Dr Eric Williams and the Democratic Labour Party had Dr Rudranath Capildeo as its leader although, unlike Williams, his scholarship and display of knowledge had no political direction. 19. Selwyn D. Ryan, Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago (University of Toronto Press, 1972), 146–7, 157.

A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS AND THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

20. ‘Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art’ (King Lear, III.iv). ‘Nothing will come of nothing’ (Lear, I.i). When Anand sees a lamp during the storm the allusion is to Lear, III. 4, when Gloucester enters with a torch: ‘Look, here comes a walking fire’. 21. See the discussion in the books by Thieme and Boxill listed in the Bibliography. Also see Geoffrey Riley, ‘Echoes of Wells in Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas’, Notes and Queries 36 (234): 2 (June 1989), 208–9. 22. Bruce King, ‘Anand’s Recherche du Temps Perdu’, Commonwealth, 6, No. 1 (Autumn 1983), 1–18.

MR STONE AND THE KNIGHTS COMPANION AND

23. Naipaul’s use of H. G. Wells’ Mr Polly has been discussed by, among others, Anthony Boxill, V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction: In Quest of the Enemy (Fredericton, New Brunswick: York Press, 1983). 24. Richard Cronin, ‘An Area of Darkness’, Imagining (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), 103–13. 25. I discuss this paradox in Bruce King, The New English Literature: Cultural Nationalism in a Changing World (London: Macmillan, 1980).

A FLAG ON THE ISLAND, THE MIMIC MEN AND THE LOSS OF EL DORADO

26. Gordon Rohlehr, ‘Talking about Naipaul’, Carib, No. 2 (1981), 39–65, esp. 49–52. 212 Notes

27. James Pollack, ‘The Parenthetic Destruction of Metaphor in V. S. Naipaul’s ‘The Mimic Men’. Osmania Journal of English Studies (December 1982), 90–9 (V. S. Naipaul Special Number). 28. V. S. Naipaul, ‘The Documentary Heresy’, 20th Century, 173 (Winter 1964–5), 107–8. 29. Eric Roach, ‘Fame a Short-lived Cycle, says Vidia’, Trinidad Guardian (4 January 1972), 1. 30. Singh’s Roman House may ironically allude to Eric Williams’s house on Lady Chancellor’s Road where the founding members of the PNM met. 31. India: A Wounded Civilization, 18–27, 37–43. 32. Vivek Dhareshwar, ‘Self-fashioning, Colonial Habitus, and Double Exclusion: V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men’, Criticism 31:1 (Winter 1989), 75–102.

IN A FREE STATE

33. Nan Doerksen, ‘In A Free State and Nausea’, World Literature Written in English, 20:1 (Spring 1981), 101–13. 34. U. R. Anantha Murthy, Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man, translated by A. K. Ramanujan (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1976). Naipaul discusses this novel in India: A Wounded Civilization, 104–12.

THE OVERCROWDED BARRACOON, ‘MICHAEL X’, AND INDIA: A WOUNDED CIVILIZATION

35. M. Banning Eyre, ‘Naipaul at Wesleyan’, The South Carolina Review, 14 (Spring 1982), 34–47, 45. 36. Bharati Mukherjee and Robert Boyers, ‘A Conversation with V. S. Naipaul’, Salmagundi, 54 (Fall 1981), 4–22, 16. 37. Harold Barratt, ‘In Defence of Naipaul’s Guerrillas’, World Literature Written in English, 28:1 (1988), 97–103. 38. Ivar Oxaal, Race and Revolutionary Consciousness: A Documentary Interpretation of the 1970 Black Power Revolt in Trinidad (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1971). 39. Cathleen Medwick, ‘Life, literature, and politics: an interview with V. S. Naipaul’, Vogue (August 1981), 129–30. 40. V. S. Naipaul, ‘Without a Dog’s Chance’, The New York Review of Books, 18 (18 May 1972), 29–31. 41. Quoted by Farrukh Dhondy in Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland, eds, The Rushdie File (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 184. 42. Ivar Oxaal, Black Intellectuals Come to Power. The Rise of Creole Nationalism (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1968), 100–1. Notes 213 ‘A NEW KING FOR THE CONGO’ AND

43. V. S. Naipaul, ‘A Plea for Rationality’, Indians in the Caribbean, I. J. Bahadur Singh, ed. (New Delhi: Sterling, 1987), 17–30, 27. 44. Fausto Ciompi, ‘The Politics of Fluidity in A Bend in the River’, The Atlantic Literary Review, 3:1 (January–March 2002), 22–36. 45. See Naipaul’s comments about Islamic historiography, ‘Our Universal Civilization’, The New York Review of Books (31 January 1991), 22–5. 46. European classical sources are discussed in Steven Blakemore, ‘An Africa of Words: V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River’, The South Carolina Review, 18:1 (Fall 1985), 15–23. 47. Michael Neill, ‘Guerrillas and Gangs: Frantz Fanon and V. S. Naipaul’, Ariel, 13:4 (1982), 21–62, 43–5. 48. M. Banning Eyre, ‘Naipaul at Wesleyan’, The South Carolina Review (Spring 1982), 34–47, 46. 49. Bruce King, ‘Graham Greene’s Inferno’, Etudes Anglaises, 21:1 (1968), 35–51. 50. V. S. Naipaul, ‘Argentina: Living with Cruelty’, The New York Review of Books, 39, No. 3 (30 January 1992), 13. 51. As there is no bend in the Ganges in Sanskrit texts of Ramayana, I wrote to Naipaul asking if he had a different version in mind. He replied that he was struck by the title of Malgonkar’s novel.

A WAY IN THE WORLD: A SEQUENCE

52. See Bruce King, Derek Walcott and West Indian Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 353.

AMONG THE BELIEVERS: AN ISLAMIC JOURNEY, ‘OUR UNIVERSAL CIVILIZATION’ AND BEYOND BELIEF: ISLAMIC EXCURSIONS AMONG THE CONVERTED PEOPLES

53. V. S. Naipaul, ‘Our Universal Civilization’, The New York Review of Books (31 January 1991), 22–5.

‘TWO WORLDS’, READING & WRITING AND

54. V. S. Naipaul,’Two Worlds. Nobel Lecture’ (7 December, 2001): www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture.html. 55. Joe Cuomo, ‘V. S. Naipaul’, The New Yorker (3 December 2001), www.newyorker.com/online/content/?011203on_onlineonly01. 214 Notes

56. The origins of Maugham’s novel and its relationship to Half a Life is filled in by J. M. Coetzee, ‘The Razor’s Edge’, New York Review of Books, 48.17 (1 November 2001), 8–10, which also discusses the symbolism of sacrifice.

NAIPAUL’S CRITICS AND POSTCOLONIALISM

57. Andrew Robinson, ‘Stranger in Fiction’, The Independent on Sunday (16 August 1992), 13. 58. V. S. Naipaul, ‘The Writer and India’, Reading & Writing (New York: New York Review Books, 2000), 54–5. 59. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), 88–91. 60. Edward Said, ‘Bitter Dispatches from the Third World’, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Press, 2000), 98–112, 100. 61. Edward Said’s claim that all writing and scholarship by the West is part of European imperialism is the basis of his Orientalism (London: Routledge, 1978). Said’s views on the postcolonial intellectual and Naipaul can be found in Salmagundi 70–1 (Spring–Summer, 1986), 44–64, 65–81. 62. For his review of Beyond Belief see Edward Said, ‘Ghost Writer’, Progressive, 62.11 (November, 1998), 40–42, also published as ‘An intellectual catastrophe’, Al-Ahram Weekly, http://www.ahram.org.eg/ weekly/1998/389/cul.htm. 63. Edward Said, ‘’, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 113–7, 116. 64. Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992). 65. Lillian Feder, Naipaul’s Truth: The Making of a Writer (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001); Selwyn Cudjoe, V. S. Naipaul, A Materialist Reading (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, Press, 1988); Rob Nixon, London Calling. V. S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Fawzia Mustafa, V. S. Naipaul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Another book of this kind is Suman Gupta, V. S. Naipaul (Northcote House in Association with the British Council, 1999). 66. Nixon 5, 176. 67. Feder 98; Peggy Nightingale, Journey Through Darkness: The Writings of V. S. Naipaul (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987), 59. 68. See, for example, Victor Ramraj, ‘The All-Embracing Christlike Vision: Tone and Attitude in The Mimic Men’ in Anna Rutherford, ed., Common Wealth (Aarhus: Akademisek Boghandel, 1972), 125–34; and ‘Sly Compassion: V. S. Naipaul’s Ambivalence in “A Christmas Story” ’, Commonwealth, 6 (1983), 61–70. 69. John Thieme, The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction (Mundelstrup: Dangeroo/London: Hansib, 1987); Postcolonial Con-Texts (London: Continuum, 2001). Notes 215

70. ‘Speaking in Tongues’ in Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa, Ferdinand Dennis and Naseem Khan, eds (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000), 168. 71. ‘Naipaul’s India and Mine’ can be found in New Writing in India, Adil Jussawalla, ed. (Middlesex: Penguin, 1974), 77–90, the Journal of South Asian Literature XI.3–4 (Spring, Summer 1976), and Nissim Ezekiel Selected Prose (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992, 1997). 72. Malise Ruthven, ‘The light of a dead star’, Times Literary Supplement (24 April 1998), 13. 73. For Walcott’s background, finances and his relationship to Naipaul, see Bruce King, Derek Walcott: A Caribbean Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Naipaul’s financial situation was far worse. 74. Derek Walcott, ‘The Garden Path’, The New Republic (13 April 1987), pp. 27–31. rpt. in Walcott’s ‘What the Twilight Says’: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 121–33. 75. Caryl Phillips, ‘The Enigma of Denial’ The New Republic (29 May 2000), 43–49; ‘V. S. Naipaul’, A New World Order: Selected Essays (London: Secker & Warburgh, 2001), 187–219. 76. In the Trinidad Guardian Walcott during the 1960s regularly reviewed and praised Naipaul’s writing. Derek Walcott, ‘A Great New Novel of the West Indies/ The man who was born unlucky’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (5 November 1961), 17; ‘History and Picong in The Middle Passage’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (30 September 1962), 9; ‘The Achievement of V. S. Naipaul’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (12 April 1964), 15; ‘Mr Naipaul’s Passage to India’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (20 September 1964), 2, 4; ‘Is V. S. Naipaul an Angry Young Man?’, Sunday Guardian Magazine [Trinidad] (6 August 1967), 8–9. 77. Landeg White, V. S. Naipaul (London: Macmillan 1975); Dolly Zulakha Hassan, V. S. Naipaul and the West Indies (New York: Peter Lang, 1989); Paul Theroux, V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Work (London: André Deutsch, 1972); Robert K. Morris, Paradoxes of Order. Some Perspectives on the Fiction of V. S. Naipaul (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1975); Amitava Kumar, ed., The Humour & The Pity – On V. S. Naipaul (British Council India and Buffalo Books, 2002). 78. James Wood’s review of Half a Life traces in Naipaul’s work the rela- tionship of pain to freedom and discusses why this annoys his critics. James Wood, ‘Damage’, The New Republic (5 November 2001), 31–5. 79. Pankaj Mishra, ‘A dream of order: Naipaul, India and Islamic fervour’, Times Literary Supplement (2 November 2001), 18–19. 80. Graham Huggan, ‘V. S. Naipaul and the Political Correctness Debate’, College Literature (October 1994), 200–6, 205.

APPENDIX A

81. See the books by Landeg White, Scott MacDonald and Ivar Oxaal (Black Intellectuals Come to Power) listed in the Bibliography. See MacDonald, 119–20, 135. Also see Brinsley Samaroo, ‘Politics and Afro-Indian 216 Notes

Relations in Trinidad’, in Calcutta to Caroni, John La Guerre, ed. (Longman Caribbean, 1974), 84–97.

APPENDIX B

82. See Selwyn D. Ryan, Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago (University of Toronto Press, 1972), 201. Select Bibliography

BOOKS BY V. S. NAIPAUL

Dates are of first publication in hard cover. First paperback editions are in parenthesis ( ). Editions used, with page numbers cited in my text, are marked*.

The Mystic Masseur, André Deutsch, 1957 (Penguin, 1964*). The Suffrage of Elvira, André Deutsch, 1958 (Penguin, 1969*). , André Deutsch, 1959 (Penguin, 1971*). A House for Mr Biswas, André Deutsch, 1961; with a ‘Foreword’, 1983 (Penguin, 1969*). The Middle Passage. Impressions of Five Societies, André Deutsch, 1962 (Penguin, 1969*). Mr Stone and the Knights Companion, André Deutsch, 1963 (Penguin, 1969*). An Area of Darkness: An Experience of India, André Deutsch, 1964 (Penguin, 1968*). The Mimic Men, André Deutsch, 1967 (Penguin, 1969*). , André Deutsch, 1968 (Penguin, 1969*). The Loss of El Dorado: A History, André Deutsch, 1969 revised edition, 1973 (Penguin, 1973*). In a Free State, André Deutsch, 1971 (Penguin, 1973*). The Overcrowded Barracoon and other Articles, André Deutsch, 1972 (Penguin, 1976*). Guerrillas, André Deutsch, 1975 (Penguin, 1976*). India: A Wounded Civilisation, André Deutsch, 1977 (Penguin, 1979*). A Bend in the River, André Deutsch, 1979 (Penguin, 1980*). ‘The Return of Eva Perón’ with ‘The Killings in Trinidad’ André Deutsch, 1980 (Penguin, 1981*). A Congo Diary, Los Angeles: Sylvester & Orphanpos, 1980. Among the Believers/An Islamic Journey, André Deutsch, 1981 (Penguin, 1982*). Finding the Centre. Two Narratives, André Deutsch, 1984 (Penguin, 1985*). The Enigma of Arrival, Viking, 1987 (Penguin, 1988*). , André Deutsch, 1989 (Penguin, 1989*). India: A Million Mutinies Now, Heinemann, 1990 (Penguin, 1992*). : A Sequence, Heinemann, 1994 (Minerva, 1994*). Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples, Little Brown, 1998 (Abacus, 1999*). Father and Son: Family Letters (Edited by Gillon Aitken), Little Brown, 1999*. Reading & Writing: A Personal Account, New York Review Press, 2000*. Half a Life: A Novel, Picador, 2001 (Picador, 200l*). The Writer and the World: Essays (Introduced and edited by Pankaj Mishra), Knopf, 2002 [Republished essays].

217 218 Select Bibliography SOME OTHER WRITINGS BY NAIPAUL

‘Trollope in the West Indies’, The Listener (15 March 1962), 461. ‘India’s Cast-Off Revolution’, Sunday Times (London) (25 August 1963), 17. ‘Critics and Criticism’, Bim, 10:38 (January–June 1964), 74–7. ‘The Documentary Heresy’, 20th Century, 173 (Winter 1964–65), 107–8. ‘What’s Wrong with Being a Snob?’, Saturday Evening Post (3 June 1967), 12, 18. ‘Power to the Caribbean People’, The New York Review of Books (3 September 1970), 32–4. ‘Without a Dog’s Chance’, The New York Review of Books (18 May 1972), 29–31. ‘The Corpse at the Iron Gate’, The New York Review of Books (10 August 1972), 3–4, 6–8. ‘Conrad’s Darkness’, The New York Review of Books (17 October 1974), 16–21. ‘Foreword’, in The Adventures of Gurudeva and other Stories by (London: André Deutsch, 1976). ‘An Island Betrayed’, Harper’s (March 1984), 62–72. ‘It’s Out of This Violence I’ve Always Written’, The New York Review of Books (16 September 1984), 45–6. ‘Among the Republicans’, The New York Review of Books (25 October 1984), 5, 8, 10, 12, 14–17. ‘Writing A House for Mr Biswas’, The New York Review of Books (24 November 1983), 22–3. ‘On Being A Writer’, The New York Review of Books (23 April 1987), 7. ‘A Plea for Rationality’, in Indians in the Caribbean, ed. I. J. Bahadur Singh (New Delhi: Sterling, 1987), 17–30. ‘Our Universal Civilization’, The New York Review of Books (31 January 1991), 22–5. ‘A Handful of Dust: Return to Guiana’, The New York Review of Books (11 April 1991), 15–20. ‘Argentina: Living with Cruelty’, The New York Review of Books (30 January 1992), 13–18. ‘The End of Peronism?’, The New York Review of Books (13 February 1992), 47–53. ‘A Million Mutinies’, India Today (18 August 1997), 36–7, 39. ‘Two Worlds. Nobel Lecture’ (7 December 2001), Ͻhttp://www.nobel.se/ literature/laureates/2001/naipaul-lecture.htmlϾ.

INTERVIEWS

James Applewhite, ‘A Trip with V. S. Naipaul’, Raritan, 10:1 (Summer 1990), 48–54. M. Banning Eyre, ‘Naipaul at Wesleyan’, The South Carolina Review, 14 (Spring 1982), 34–47. Joe Cuomo, ‘V. S. Naipaul’, The New Yorker (3 December 2001), www.newyorker.com/online/content/?011203on_onlineonly01. Select Bibliography 219

Alex Hamilton, ‘Life on Approval’, The Guardian (4 October 1971), 8. Ian Hamilton, ‘Without a Place’ (30 July 1971), 897. Michael Harris, ‘Naipaul on Campus: Sending out a Plea for Rationality’, Tapia [Trinidad] (29 June 1975), 2. Aamer Hussein, ‘Delivering the Truth, An Interview with V. S. Naipaul’, Times Literary Supplement (2 September 1994), 3–4. Ramin Jahanbegloo, ‘Philosophy and Life: An Interview’, The New York Review of Books (28 May 1992), 46–54. Feroza Jussawallla, ed., Conversations with V. S. Naipaul (University Press of Mississippi 1997) [24 interviews]. Alfred Kazin, ‘V. S. Naipaul, Novelist as Thinker’, The New York Review of Books (1 May 1977), 20–1. Cathleen Medwick, ‘Life, Literature, and Politics: An Interview with V. S. Naipaul’, Vogue (August 1981), 129–30. Charles Michener, ‘The Dark Visions of V. S. Naipaul’, Newsweek (16 November 1981), 104–17. Bharati Mukherjee and Robert Boyers, ‘A Conversation with V. S. Naipaul’, Salmagundi, 54 (1981), 4–22. Alastair Niven, ‘V. S. Naipaul Talks to Alastair Niven’, Wasafiri 21 (Spring 1995), 5–6. Eric Roach, ‘Fame a Short-lived Cycle, says Vidia’, Trinidad Guardian (4 January 1972), 1–2. Andrew Robinson, ‘Stranger in Fiction’, The Independent on Sunday (16 August 1992), 23. Adrian Rowe-Evans, ‘The Writer as Colonial’, Transition [Ghana], 40 (1971), 56–62. Stephen Schiff, ‘The Ultimate Exile’, The New Yorker (23 May 1994), 62–71. Derek Walcott, ‘Interview with V. S. Naipaul’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (7 March 1965), 5, 7.

SOME BOOKS ABOUT NAIPAUL

Anthony Boxill, V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction: In Quest of the Enemy (Fredericton, New Brunswick: York Press, 1983). Selwyn Cudjoe, V. S. Naipaul: A Materialist Reading (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988). Lillian Feder, Naipaul’s Truth: The Making of a Writer (Lanham, Maryland & Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Suman Gupta, V. S. Naipaul (Northcote House in Association with the British Council, 1999). Robert Hamner, V. S. Naipaul (New York: Twayne, 1973). Robert Hamner, ed., Critical Perspectives on V. S. Naipaul (Washington, DC: Three Continents Press, 1977). Dolly Zulakha Hassan, V. S. Naipaul and the West Indies (New York: Peter Lang, 1989). Kelvin Jarvis, V. S. Naipaul: A Selective Bibliography with Annotations, 1957–1987 (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1989). 220 Select Bibliography

Amitava Kumar, ed., The Humour & The Pity – On V. S. Naipaul (British Council and Buffalo Books, 2002). Robert K. Morris, Paradoxes of Order. Some Perspectives on the Fiction of V. S. Naipaul (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1975). Fawzia Mustafa, V. S. Naipaul (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Peggy Nightingale, Journey Through Darkness: The Writing of V. S. Naipaul (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987). Rob Nixon, London Calling: V. S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Paul Theroux, V. S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Work (London: André Deutsch, 1972). Paul Theroux, Sir Vidia’s Shadow (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). John Thieme, The Web of Tradition: Uses of Allusion in V. S. Naipaul’s Fiction (London: Hansib Publishing, 1988). Landeg White, V. S. Naipaul (London: Macmillan, 1975).

SPECIAL ISSUES OF JOURNALS

The Atlantic Literary Review, 3, No. 1 (January–March 2002). Commonwealth, 6, No. 1 (Autumn 1983). Commonwealth, 9, No. 1 (Autumn 1986). Modern Fiction Studies, 30, No. 3 (Autumn 1984). Moving Worlds 2.1 (2002) Osmania Journal of English Studies V. S. Naipaul Special Number (December 1982).

SOME ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS ABOUT NAIPAUL

James Applewhite, ‘A Trip with V. S. Naipaul’, Raritan 10.1 (Summer 1990), 48–54. Harold Barratt, ‘In Defence of Naipaul’s’ Guerrillas’, World Literature Written in English, 28.1 (Spring 1988), 97–101. Ben Belitt, ‘A House for Mr Naipaul’, Salmagundi 54 (Fall 1981), 23–42. Steven Blakemore, ‘An Africa of Words: V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River’, South Carolina Review, 18.1 (Fall 1985), 15–23. Amit Chaudhuri, ‘Learning how to write’, Times Literary Supplement (21 September 2001), 22–3. Fausto Ciompi, ‘The Politics of Fluidity in A Bend in the River’, The Atlantic Literary Review, 3.1 (January–March 2002), 22–36. Rhonda Cobham, ‘The Caribbean Voices Programme and the Development of West Indian Short Fiction: 1945–1958’ in The Story Must Be Told: Short Narrative Prose in the New English Literatures, ed. Peter O. Stummer (Würzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann, 1986), 146–60. J. M. Coetzee, ‘The Razor’s Edge’, The New York Review of Books 48.17 (1 November 2001) 8–10. Select Bibliography 221

Joan Dayan, ‘Gothic Naipaul’, Transition 59 (1993), 158–70. Vivek Dhareshwar, ‘Self-fashioning, Colonial Habitus, and Double Exclusion: V. S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men’, Criticism, 31.1 (Winter 1989), 75–102. Nan Doerksen, ‘In a Free State and Nausea’, World Literature Written in English, 20 (1981), 105–13. Joseph Epstein, ‘A Cottage for Mr Naipaul’, The New Criterion, 6.2 (October 1987), 6–15. Nissim Ezekiel, ‘Naipaul’s India and Mine’, in New Writing in India, ed. Adil Jussawalla (Middlesex: Penguin, 1974), 77–90. Annabelle F. Fersch, ‘V. S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River and the Art of Re-Reading’, Commonwealth Novel in English, 5.2 (1992), 1–8. Glyne A. Griffith, ‘Travel Narrative As Cultural Critique: V. S. Naipaul’s Travelling Theory’, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, 29.2 (1993), 87–92. Graham Huggan, ‘Anxieties of Influence: Conrad in the Caribbean’, Commonwealth, 11.1 (Autumn 1988), 1–12. Graham Huggan, ‘V. S. Naipaul and the Political Correctness Debate’, College Literature (October 1994), 200–6. Kelvin Jarvis, ‘V. S. Naipaul: A Bibliographical Update, 1987–1994’, Ariel, 26 (October 1995), 71–85. Tabish Khair, ‘V. S. Naipaul: Narrating from the Empty Centre’, Babu Fictions: Alienation in Contemporary Indian English Novels (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 243–64. Amitava Kumar, ‘The Bend in Their Rivers’, The Nation (26 November 2001), 32–8. Pankaj Mishra, ‘A Dream of Order: Naipaul, India, and Islamic Fervour’, Times Literary Supplement (2 November 2001), 18–19. Melina Nathan, ‘V. S. Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival’, New Voices [Trinidad], 18.35/36 (March–September 1990), 43–67. Michael Neill, ‘Guerrillas and the Gangs: Frantz Fanon and V. S. Naipaul’, Ariel, 13.4 (1982), 21–62. Caryl Phillips, ‘The Enigma of Denial’, The New Republic (29 May 2000), 43–9. Caryl Phillips, ‘V. S. Naipaul’, A New World Order: Selected Essays (London: Secker & Warburgh, 2001), 187–219. Kenneth Ramchand, ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, An Introduction to the Study of West Indian Literature (Kingston: Nelson Caribbean, 1976), 73–90. Arnold Rampersad, ‘V. S. Naipaul: Turning in the South’, Raritan, 10.1 (Summer 1990), 24–39. Victor Ramraj, ‘The All-Embracing Christlike Vision: Tone and Attitude in The Mimic Men’ in Common Wealth, ed. Anna Rutherford (Aarhus: Akademisek Boghandel, 1972), 125–34. Victor Ramraj, ‘Sly Compassion: V. S. Naipaul’s Ambivalence in “A Christmas Story” ’, Commonwealth 6 (1983), 61–70. Victor J. Ramraj, ‘V. S. Naipaul: The Irrelevance of Nationalism’, World Literature Written in English, 23.1 (Winter 1984), 187–96. Gordon Rohlehr [interviewed by Selwyn Cudjoe], ‘Talking about Naipaul’, Carib, 2 (1981), 39–65. , ‘V. S. Naipaul’, Imaginary Homelands – Essays & Criticism 1981–1991 (London: Granta Books, 1991), 148–51. 222 Select Bibliography

Malise Ruthven ‘The light of a dead star’, Times Literary Supplement (24 April 1998), 13. Edward Said, ‘Bitter Dispatches from the Third World’ and ‘Among the Believers’, Reflections on Exile and Other Essays (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 98–112, 113–7. Edward Said, ‘Ghost Writer’, Progressive, 62.11 (November 1998), 40–2 [also as ‘An intellectual catastrophe’ Al-Ahram Weekly, http:// www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1998/389/cul.htm]. Richard I. Smyer, ‘Naipaul’s A Bend in the River: Fiction and the Post- colonial Tropics’, The Literary Half Yearly, 25.1 (January 1984), 55–65. Sara Suleri, ‘Naipaul’s Arrival’, The Yale Journal of Criticism, 2:1 (Fall 1988), 25–50. Thorell Tsomondo, ‘Metaphor, Metonymy and Houses: Figures of Construction in A House for Mr Biswas’, World Literature Written in English, 29.2 (Autumn 1989), 69–82. Derek Walcott, ‘A Great New Novel of the West Indies/The man who was born unlucky’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (5 November 1961), 17. Derek Walcott, ‘History and Picong in The Middle Passage’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (30 September 1962), 9. Derek Walcott, ‘The Achievement of V. S. Naipaul’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (12 April 1964), 15. Derek Walcott, ‘Mr Naipaul’s Passage to India’, Sunday Guardian [Trinidad] (20 September 1964), 2, 4. Derek Walcott, ‘Is V. S. Naipaul an Angry Young Man?’, Sunday Guardian Magazine [Trinidad] (6 August 1967), 8–9. Derek Walcott, ‘The Garden Path’, The New Republic, 13 April 1987, 27–31. rpt. in Walcott’s ‘What the Twilight Says’: Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998), 121–33. James Wood, ‘Damage’, The New Republic (5 November 2001), 31–5.

GENERAL BACKGROUND

Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992). Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989). David Dabydeen and Brinsley Samaroo, eds, India in the Caribbean (London: Hansib Publishing, 1988). Ferdinand Dennis and Naseem Khan, eds, Voices of the Crossing: The Impact of Britain on Writers from Asia, the Caribbean and Africa (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2000). Louis James, Caribbean Literature in English (London: Longman, 1999). Derek Humphry and David Tindall, False Messiah: The Story of Michael X (London: Hart-Davis MacGibbon, 1997). Bruce King, The New English Literatures Cultural Nationalism in a Changing World (London: Macmillan, 1980). Bruce King, ed., West Indian Literature (London: Macmillan, 1979, enlarged edition 1995). Select Bibliography 223

Morton Klass, East Indians in Trinidad (London: Press, 1961). John La Guerre, ed., Calcutta to Caroni: The East Indians of Trinidad (London: Longman, 1974). Scott B. MacDonald, Trinidad and Tobago: Democracy and Development in the Caribbean (New York: Praeger, 1986). Michael Abdul Malik, From Michael de Freitas to Michael X (London: André Deutsch, 1968). Yogendra Malik, East Indians in Trinidad: A Study in Minority Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). Vijay Mishra, ‘The Diasporic Imaginary: Theorizing the Indian Diaspora’, Textual Practice, 10.3 (1996), 421–47. Seepersad Naipaul, Gurudeva and other Indian Tales (Port of Spain: Trinidad Publishers, 1943). Ivar Oxaal, Black Intellectuals Come to Power: The Rise of Creole Nationalism in Trinidad & Tobago (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1968). Ivar Oxaal, Race and Revolutionary Consciousness: A Documentary Interpretation of the 1970 Black Power Revolt in Trinidad (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1971). Kenneth Ramchand, The West Indian Novel and Its Background (London: Heinemann Educational, 2nd edn, 1984). Selwyn D. Ryan, Race and Nationalism in Trinidad and Tobago: A Study of Decolonization in a Multiracial Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1972). John Thieme, Postcolonial Con-Texts (London: Continuum, 2001). Ben Whitaker, ed., The Fourth World: Victims of Group Oppression (New York: Schocken Books, 1973). Index

A la recherche du temps perdu 75, 189 Bible, The 42, 45 Abdul Malik see de Freitas bildungsroman 35 Achebe, Chinua 129 Bissoondath, Neil 20 Adventures of Gurudeva, The 20, 210 black nationalism 17, 29, 118, 154, Aeneid 124 156, 209 Afghanistan 170, 171 Black Power 12, 13, 29, 101, 144, 158 Africa 11, 87, 92, 119, 124, 130, 134, Black Power, Trinidad 101–2 159, 182, 194–5, 204 Blakemore, Steven 213 Indians in 11, 16, 17 Boxill, Anthony 211 Africans 88 Brahmin 15 African-Americans 70, 88, 92, 93, 95, Brahmins 117, 184, 185, 186, 192 148 duties of 15, 30 African Socialism 118, 159, 160, 191 Brontë, Charlotte 112, 114 Ahmad, Aijaz 198, 214 Brontë, Emily 112 Aitken, Gillon 9 Buddhist 130, 169, 170, 175 Alvi, Nadira Khannum 19 Butler, Uriah 34, 80, 208, 211 Alwi, Syed 176 Americans see United States calypsos 31–2, 205 Amerindians 83, 161, 164, 182 Camus, Albert 60, 63, 75, 88, 122, 130 Amin, Idi 106, 129 Canada 130, 162 Anguilla 100 Capildeo, Rudranath 34, 207, 211 antagonism 69 Capildeo, Simbhoonath 34, 208 anti-epic 113, 126 Capildeos 7, 207–8, 211 Arab conquests 169 ‘Caribbean Voices’ (BBC) 9, 10, 19, 21 Arab imperialism 87, 122, 170, 177 Carmichel, Stokely 102, 158 Arabization 15, 172, 173, 178 Carnival 102, 158 Arabs 119, 121, 126, 132, 159, 172 Castro, Fidel 101, 105 and slavery 16, 130, 196–7 Cave of Amarnath 66 Argentina 107, 133, 193 Chachnama 170 Aryans 8, 74, 77, 78, 81, 133, 134, 167, Chaguanas 7, 207 169 change (social and cultural) 14, 23, 53, Australia 196 69, 145, 148, 178 autobiographical novel 50, 139 Chinese 86, 92 autobiography 5, 14, 43, 46, 53, 75, 77, Chirico, Giorgio de 143–4 80, 90, 133, 135, 137, 146, 156, 162, Christianity 126, 186 179, 187 Christian missionary schools 48, 186 fiction as 6 La Chute 75 mixed with fiction 18, 19, 138, 152 Cipriani, Arthur 34 mock 35 Ciompi, Fausto 120, 213 and non-fiction 8 cities 47, 48, 147 civil war 87 BBC 10, 23, 180, 181 Cobham, Rhonda 210 Barrat, Harold 212 Coetzee, J. M. 185, 214 Beacon, The 20 colonialism 1, 2, 57, 152, 192, 200 Bend in the Ganges, A 133 Columbus, Christopher 79, 153 Benson, Gale 104, 105, 111 con men 28, 37, 107, 154, 164 Berlin 181 Conrad, Joseph 13, 87, 120, 161, 188, Bhabha, Homi 22, 202 201, 202

224 Index 225

Constable, John 147 freedom 12–13, 50, 71, 87, 89, 91, 96, ‘Conversation with V. S. Naipaul, A’ 150, 164 100, 212 French 81 Cronin, Richard 211 Froude, James 56, 200 Cuba 158, 181 Cudjoe, Selwyn 199, 205, 214 Galsworthy, John 3 Cuomo, Joe 213 Gandhi, Indira 13 Gandhi, Mahatma 14, 67, 116–17, 181, dandy 49, 75–6, 81 190, 192 Dante 127–9 Germany 180, 182 Davis, Basil 102 Goa 192 decolonization 3, 6, 72, 76, 132, 150, Godden, Rumer 189 151, 193, 195 Gomes, Albert 20, 34, 80, 208 de Freitas, Michael (Michael X) 101, Gorky, Maxim 190 104, 105, 112 Gray, Thomas 188 Democratic Labour Party 79, 208 Greece 96 depressions 9, 43, 63 Greene, Graham 81, 113, 129, 162, 213 Dhareshwar, Vivek 212 Grenadians 25 Dhondy, Farrukh 22, 202, 212 guerrillas 102, 115 diaspora 36, 140, 141, 193 Guevara, Che 181, 193 disaporic individuals 111, 153 guides 128, 193 Dickens, Charles 34, 44, 51, 81, 145, Gulliver’s Travels 78 201 Gupta, Suman 199, 214 Doerksen, Nan 212 Guyana 16, 56, 75, 79, 161, 195, 209 Dravidians 134 Habibie, B. J. 175 East Africa 118, 119, 121, 123 Haiti 56, 163 education, effects of 45, 81, 138, 145, Hale, Patricia 10, 11 179 Hamlet 189 Egypt 87, 92, 96, 97, 98, 99 Hardy, Thomas 113, 145, 147, 189 Eliot, T. S. 61, 75, 81, 82, 113, 134, 144 Hassan, Dolly Zulakha 205 Ellison, Ralph 78, 81, 90, 106 Hearne, John 19 Empire Writes Back, The 195–6, 214 Heart of Darkness, The 92, 127 Empson, William 90 Heart of the Matter, The 129 England 12, 21–2, 59, 139–40, 144, hell 126, 128–9 145, 146, 181 Hemingway, Ernest 3, 188, 190 Roman ruins 127 Hindi 3, 16, 36 epic 41, 47, 83–4, 124, 133, 166, 183 Hindu 8, 10, 15, 17, 31, 39, 85, 93, 116, L’Etranger 61 130, 180, 206 existential 44, 59, 60–1 63, 64, 65, 68, dharma 91 73–4, 87, 91, 134, 141 extremism 117, 185, 205 extinction 42, 72, 76 karma (fate) 33 Eyre, M. Banning 212, 213 spirituality 77, 85, 117, 185, 187 Ezekiel, Nissim 202, 215 Trinidad 35, 49, 69, 173 history 6, 44, 52, 75, 78, 103, 121, 173 Fanon, Frantz 106, 109, 112, 115, 118, cyclical 80, 111, 124, 141, 193 126, 132 of Indian-Africa links 160 fantasy 26, 28, 29, 46, 70, 80, 101, 112, Islamic 170, 213 116, 125, 161 loss of 169 fatalism 22, 48, 59, 60, 64, 72, 180, 185 as mimicry 82 fathers 33, 43, 44, 51, 76, 79, 81, 141, of Trinidad 23, 32, 36–7, 45, 83–4, 166, 176, 177 Hobbes, Thomas 65, 82, 89, 128 Feder, Lillian 199–200, 214 home 149, 160 Fiji 16 homeless 3, 43, 86, 90, 120, 140 226 Index homosexuality 11, 89, 91, 95, 107, 108, Kakar, Sudhir 190 109, 155 Kashmir 59, 65, 78, 149 Horatian retirement 82 Keats, Jonathan 189 Huggan, Graham 206, 215 King, Bruce 210, 211, 213, 215 human will 34, 47–8, 58–9 King Lear 43, 211 Humour & The Pity, The 205, 215 Kingsley, Charles 200 hybridity 181, 182, 200, 205 Koran 169, 170, 174, 175 Kumar, Amitava 205, 215 Illich, Ivan 175 Imaduddin, Mr 173–5 Lamming, George 19, 194, 211 imperialism 4, 113, 134, 150–1, 173, Lazarillo de Tormes 18 193, 200, 203 Lebanese 97, 99 advantages 16, 172 London 22, 73, 78, 87, 132, 135 British and Islamic compared 193 Lord Jim 188 criticism of 49, 101 Lovelace, Earl 210 and fiction 98 incest 81 Makarere (University, Uganda) 11, 159 indentured labour 16, 83, 100, 144, 150 Malaysia 169, 173, 174, 176 independence 192, 194 Malgonkar, Manohar 133, 213 India 2, 66, 81, 141, 150, 169, 202 Mann, Thomas 139 and Islam 2, 15, 184, 192, 193 manners as morals 62 lower castes and untouchables 31, Mao ZeDong 101, 106, 108, 118 66, 74, 117, 184, 185, 190 Martinique 56, 57, 72 Mutiny (1857) 150 Marvell, Andrew 82 Indian diaspora 11, 16, 22, 45, 53, 72, Marxism 127, 132, 152, 158, 163, 168, 86, 93, 120, 123, 141, 144 170–1, 182, 198, 201, 208, 209 Indian-black conflicts 10, 57, 72, 157, masochism 19, 31, 105, 125 160, 208 Masters, John 189 Indians in Trinidad 16–17, 45, 47, 52, Maugham, Somerset 87, 88, 98, 185, 156–7, 172, 208 187, 189 169, 173, 174, 175, 203 Mauritius 100–1 Invisible Man, The 78, 90, 95 Mecca 174, 176 13, 167–9, 171, 172, 177 Mendes, Alfred 20 Islam 1, 2, 150, 167, 177, 197–8 Merchant of Venice, The 158 contrast to Christianity 170 Michael X see de Freitas fundamentalism 167–8, 169, 172, mimicry 27, 56, 67, 75, 77, 96, 101, 113 173, 174, 203 art as 82 Ivory Coast 14 of black 107 changing 69–70 Jamaat-al-Muslimeen 159 and education 81, 145 Jamaica 56, 102 nation as 120 Jamal, Hakin 104, 105 political 37, 118 James, C. L. R. 20, 52, 163, 209 writing as 78 influences Naipaul 163 Miranda, Francisco 154 James, Henry 136 Mishra, Pankaj 205–6, 215 James, Louis 210 Mittelholzer, Edgar 19, 21 Jane Eyre 112, 114 Mobutu 13, 106, 118, 119 Japan 14, 172 modernization 36, 67, 72, 116, 148, Japanese occupation (WW II) 167, 168, 172, 186 176, 177 Mohenjodaro 169 Java 177 Morris, Robert 205, 214 Jews 78, 152, 158 Moyne Commission 79 Jones, Inigo 82 Mr Polly see H. G. Wells Jonson, Ben 82 Mulele, Pierre 126 Joyce, James 24, 45, 53, 134, 139, 144 Murthy, U. R. Anantha 91, 212 Index 227

Mustafa, Fawzia 199, 214 Naipaul’s fiction Mysore 186–7, 195 Bend in the River, A 13, 22, 31, 75, 86, 107, 118–35 Nabokov, Vladimir 77 ‘Bogart’ 23, 29 ‘Naipaul at Wesleyan’ 100, 212 ‘Caution’ 33 Naipaul, Kamala 9, 10 ‘Coward, The’ 29 Naipaul, Seepersad 3, 7, 9–10, 21, 123, ‘Enemy, The’ 70 188, 207 Enigma of Arrival, The 12, 14, 22, 32, influence 20 53, 61, 74, 134, 138–48, 204 Naipaul, Shiva 20, 115 ‘Epilogue’ (In a Free State) 92, 97–8 Naipaul, V. S. (life and opinions) ‘Flag on the Island, A’ 12, 69 and American movies 18, 179 Flag on the Island, A 12, 22, 69–71 awards (honours, prizes) 1, 3, 4, 10, ‘Greenie and Yellow’ 71 12, 14 Guerrillas 5, 13, 22, 29, 31, 86, bowler 9 101–16, 158, 201, 204 brahminism 15 Half a Life 22, 36, 117, 168, 180–93, 205 characters 4 ‘His Chosen Calling’ 31 colonialism 2 ‘History’ 8, 17, 154, 155–9 compassion 35, 88, 100, 105, 166 ‘Home Again’ 11, 17, 154, 159–61 crisis in life 58 House for Mr Biswas, A 10, 18, 20, 21, decolonization (view of) 17 40, 44–55, 70, 76, 141–2, 207; and England 3, 59, 140 Half a Life 183; and Mr Stone fatalism 15, 22 64–5 fiction (purpose) 5, 48, 215 ‘In a Free State’ 11, 86, 88–9, 92, 103, Hindu extremism 2 107, 44, 209 India (criticism of) 4, 15 In a Free State 12, 87–99, 140 Indian diaspora 22 ‘Inheritance, An’ (‘Prelude’) 155 Indian influences 7–8, 15–16, 131, ‘In the Gulf of Desolation’ 153, 154, 133–6 164 industrialization 4 ‘Man-man’ 18, 25–9, 54 life 7–14 Miguel Street 10, 23–33, 69, 70, 155, life of writer 59, 61, 64, 76, 77 190 literary critic 51, 82, 170, 186, 206 Mimic Men, The 11, 12, 21, 53, 68, literary market 4–5, 20, 21, 196 71–83, 137, 138, 144, 146, 192, 194, literary models 18, 43–4, 47, 51, 55, 201, 207, 208 75, 83, 145 Mr Stone and the Knights Companion marriages 10, 19 10, 22, 59–65 nationalist 56 ‘My Aunt Gold Teeth’ 69 outsider 165 Mystic Masseur, The 10, 18, 19, 33–6, periods of writing 12, 14, 58 71, 207 pessimist 87 ‘New Clothes’ 153, 161 Port of Spain 152 ‘New Man, A’ 153, 154, 164 Rushdie comparison 5, 189 ‘On the Run’ 154, 163 scepticism 37 ‘One Out of Many’ 88, 90, 92, 93–5 snobbery 2, 11, 51, 52, 60, 77, 94 ‘Parcel of Papers’ 153, 161, 163 style 4, 7, 18, 19, 25, 52, 61, 90, 96, ‘Passenger’ 162–3 120, 136, 162, 182–3 ‘Perfect Tenants, The’ 71 subject matter 5, 6 ‘Pyrotechnicist, The’ 30 and translators 166–7 Suffrage of Elvira, The 10, 33, 36–40, vision of life 42, 70, 87, 97, 99, 123, 190 124, 130 ‘Tell Me Who to Kill’ 22, 89, 90, 91, Walcott comparison 204 95–6 white characters 31, 204 ‘Titus Hoyt, I. A.’ 30 white expatriates 11, 73, 88, 89, 92, ‘Tramp at Piraeus, The’ 89, 92, 96–9 121, 205 Way in the World, A 8, 12, 17, 152–64 228 Index

Naipaul’s non-fiction character sketches 26, 27, 28, 62, 71, Among the Believers 1, 13, 136, 165 167–71, 173–4 character types 38, 46, 71, 205 Area of Darkness, An 10, 53, 59, 65–8, cinematic 97, 111 72, 73, 144, 149, 202 composites 34, 102, 152, 162 ‘Argentina: Living with Cruelty’ 213 conflicting views 59, 60, 149 ‘Author’s Forward’ 136 contradictions 205 Between Father and Son: Family Letters doubling 51, 71, 80, 110 9–10, 76 epilogues 38, 54, 141, 142, 188 Beyond Belief 1, 15, 172–8, 197, 203, epiphanies 130–1 205 exiles 73, 77, 81 Congo Diary, A 13, 118 facts 18, 28, 34, 41, 52, 75, 146, 207–8 ‘Conrad’s Darkness’ 118 films 37, 39, 93, 96, 97, 108, 190 ‘Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro, The’ incongruity 25, 28, 33, 34, 38, 40, 48, 136 49, 91, 93 ‘Documentary Heresy, The’ 79, 212 inversions 31, 44, 53, 60, 78, 93, 109, Finding the Centre 14, 23, 136–8, 139 112, 113, 128, 183 India: A Million Mutinies Now 14, 15, language 39, 92, 93, 95, 113 149–51, 206 motifs 50, 54, 64, 79, 86, 105, 135, 143 India: A Wounded Civilization 13, 91, musical organization 143, 154 116–17, 187, 206, 212 narrator 33, 50, 52, 63, 75, 120, 123, ‘Killing History’ 169, 170 138, 152 Killings in Trinidad 13 prologues 43, 84, 90, 97, 188 Loss of El Dorado, The 6, 12, 83–5, 89, puns 28, 90–1 140, 144, 153 rebels 36, 48, 49, 60, 63, 94, 97, 122 ‘Michael X’ 13, 101, 104 sequences 90, 152, 154 Middle Passage, The 10, 27, 37, 55–7, social comedy 37, 39, 62, 88, 94 72, 107, 199–200 structure 7, 26, 27–8, 29, 54–5, 64, ‘New King of the Congo, A’ 13, 118, 78–9, 97, 110–11, 137–8, 141–3, 126 180, 186, 187 ‘Our Universal Civilization’ 1, 13, subtexts 6, 18, 60, 62, 83, 90, 133, 172, 210, 213 151, 187–8 Overcrowded Barracoon, The 13, tales 166, 188–9 100–1 time 71, 78, 139, 154 ‘Plea for Rationality, A’ 118, 213 writers in 6, 27, 36, 46, 51, 61, 70, 71, ‘Prologue to an Autobiography’ 14, 77, 106, 110, 112–15, 146–7, 162–3, 23, 32, 53, 136, 137–8, 141 190 Reading & Writing 1, 2, 8, 179–80, also see con men, sex, symbols 214 Narayan, R. K. 15, 82, 186, 187, 195, 201 ‘Return of Eva Perón, The’ 107, 125 Guide, The 186 Return of Eva Perón, The 13, 101, 102, My Days 186 105, 118 national independence 116, 192 Turn in the South, A 14, 148–9 nationalism 56–7, 67–8, 70, 127, 150, ‘Two Worlds’ 179, 213 157, 185, 196 ‘Without a Dog’s Chance’ 212 ‘n.b.’ 210 ‘Writer and India, The’ 214 Neill, Michael 126, 213 Naipaul’s writings, aspects neo-colonialism 194 allegories 55, 90, 126, 144 New Day 37 allusions, ironic 44, 78, 81, 111, 126, New Statesman 10 129, 135, 144–5, 189 New Yorker, The 3 betrayals 95, 120, 128, 161 Nigeria 129 British abroad 88, 92, 98, 204–5 Nightingale, Peggy 200, 214 centres of novels 43, 78–9, 80–1, 88, Nixon, Rob 199–200, 214 121, 142, 152, 180 Notting Hill 181 characters 166 Nsele 118 Index 229

Obote, Milton 11 Roach, Eric 212 oil money 158, 167, 172, 174, 175, 177 Rohlehr, Gordon 78, 211 origins, myth of 74 Roman Empire 120, 125, 127 outsiders 42, 63, 66, 86, 103, 107, 165, Rome 114, 128, 147 180, 182 Rushdie, Salman 189, 198 Oxaal, Ivar 29, 211, 212 Ruthven, Malise 203, 215 Oxford University 3, 8, 9 Rwanda 92, 119 Ryan, Selwyn 211, 216 Padmore, George 163 169, 170, 171, 174 sadism 19, 125 Paradise Lost 94 Said, Edward 196–9, 214 passivity 74, 80, 94, 108, 116 St Lucia 204 People’s National Movement 17, 80, Samaroo, Brinsley 215–16 208, 211 Samskara 91, 212 Perón 133 Sander, Reinhard 210 Persia 167, 169 sanskrit 160 Persian 170 Sartre, Jean-Paul 60, 74, 88 Phillips, Caryl 204, 215 Satanic Verses, The 198 picong 52 Saudi Arabia 167, 169, 171, 172, 177 plantation economy 84 Schiff, Stephen 210 Pliny 124 Selvon, Samuel 19, 20–1, 194, 196, 204 politics 26, 29, 33, 35, 37, 72, 154, sex 19, 31, 65, 66, 77, 80, 100, 104, 105, 194, 198 108, 125, 190–2 politics and Islam 176 and Africa 92, 191 Pollack, James 212 dangers 87 Pol Pot 181, 182, 183 failures 74 Port of Spain 7, 8, 17, 23, 24, 45, 49, 54, Shakespeare, William 39 102, 152, 155–7, 158, 159, 207 Shia Muslims 155, 167, 171 Portrait of the Artist, A 53, 75 Shiva 64, 134 Portugal 181, 192 Shiva Sena 117 postcolonial 77, 130, 132, 147, 149, 150, Sind 169, 170 151, 167, 172, 200 Singh, H. B. 199 postcolonial advisors 89, 93, 154, 161 Sir Vidia’s Shadow 11, 210 postcolonial theory 18, 195–9, 200, 201 slavery 16, 17, 122, 130, 148 polarities 195–6 slaves 122, 169, 170, 196–7 Proust, Marcel 20, 45, 78, 138, 139, 189 South America 56, 153 Spain 169 Queen’s Royal College 8, 207 Spanish cruelties 159 Qum 168 Spanish empire 154 Sri Lanka 181, 182 Rachman, Peter 181 Stalin, Joseph 168 Raleigh, Sir Walter 84, 153, 161 Sudan 196 Ramanujan, A. K. 15 Sufism 175, 176 Ramayana 36, 133–5, 213 Surinam 56 Ramchand, Kenneth 210 Swahili 160 Rampersad, Arnold 17, 210 symbols 41–2, 65, 108, 113, 124, 131, Ramraj, Victor 201, 214 134, 142, 156 Razor’s Edge, The 185, 189, 214 black 107 Reid, V. S. 37 budgerigars 71 Republican Party, The 206 estate 3, 55, 144–5 revolutionaries 104, 161, 163 films 93 revolutions 116, 153, 167, 168, 193 garden 43, 143 Rhys, Jean 19, 111, 114, 139, 202 house 43, 44, 45, 48, 53, 82, 121, 144, Richardson, Samuel 113 147, 148, 212 Riley, Geoffrey 211 hunting 97 230 Index symbols – continued in Trinidad 92–3 lives 121 utopianism 12, 127 mirror 43, 88, 94 names 38, 62, 70, 71–2, 80, 103, 114, Vanity Fair 189 125, 128, 191 Venezuela 102, 153, 164 parties 121 Virgil 124, 127–8, 132 rooks 145 La Vita Nuova 128 sex 106–7, 108 ships 96, 98, 144 Wahid, Mr 175–6 shipwreck 73–4, 80, 144 Walcott, Derek 1, 21, 51, 106, 203–5, 215 trees 63, 65 Washington, D. C. 87, 93 whiteness 106, 108 ‘Waste Land, The’ 61, 75 words 114–15 Waugh, Evelyn 113, 162 Wells, H. G. 51, 62, 89, 136, 211 Theroux, Paul 11, 205, 210 Wesleyan University 12, 127, 212, 213 Thieme, John 201, 210, 211, 214 West Indian Federation 10 Third Worldism 12, 101, 103, 116, West Indian writing 19–21, 194, 210 196–7, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204 Whitaker, Ben 210 Touré, Sekou 129 White, Landeg 205, 210 Transition 11 white liberals 16, 70, 94, 103, 105, 115, translators 165, 168–9 116, 182 travel 5, 11, 12 Wide Sargasso Sea 114 travel books 6, 10, 14, 19, 55, 66, 126, Williams, Eric 10, 29, 79, 115, 156, 157, 137, 148–51, 153, 165, 166, 177, 202 208, 209, 211, 212 Trinidad 3, 12, 13, 17, 28, 29, 32, 38, 75, and British 17 84, 138, 156, 192, 195, 209 and Naipaul 55 corruption 130 Wiltshire 12, 86, 127, 133, 138, 141–2, education 25, 45 143, 144 Muslims 40, 159 Wood, James 215 writing about 47, 162 Woodford Square 15, 156, 157 Trinidad 20 Woodlanders, The 113 Trollope, Anthony 200 Wordsworth, William 189 Tweedie, Jill 104 world as illusion 15, 59, 67 Wright, Richard 17 Uganda 11, 92, 132, 159, 160 Wuthering Heights 112, 189 United States 61, 82, 94, 102, 108, 132, 164, 194, 203 Yeats, W. B. 134 abroad 86, 104, 127 Indian in 92–3 Zaire 118, 119 Southern 14, 148–9, 158 Zanzibar 119