Overview

The plethora of commentary from highly respected voices in a broad cross-section of academic disciplines, which V. S. Naipaul’s death on 11 August 2018 elicited, ranged so widely, both cognitively and emotionally, that if a student of literature, unfamiliar with the Naipaulian era, read it all, they would have failed to make sense of the divergences. Allegations included that he ‘was a cruel man’, ‘a scarred man’, ‘the darkest dungeons of colonialism incarnate: self-punishing, self-loathing, world-loathing, full of nastiness and fury’, ‘a ventriloquist for the nastiest cliches European colonialism had devised to rule the world with arrogance and confidence’ and so on. On the other hand, writers referred to Naipaul as a ‘brilliant writer’s writer’, one ‘who holds a mirror of imagination unto society to capture a certain view of reality’ and one who ‘has turned the genre of the travelogue into an art form’. Debates aside, many of us appreciate the value of Naipaul’s writing to the deepest possible comprehension of the imperial impulse and the myriad reasons it manifested as colonialism. The First Naipaul World Epics is the first in a series of critical collections that aim to demonstrate this value. At the same time, the series seeks to help the new student through the quagmire of divergent opinions his personality and writing have generated.

Full Product Details

Author:   J Vijay Maharaj (University of West Indies)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury India
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic India
Dimensions:   Width: 14.20cm , Height: 2.40cm , Length: 22.20cm
Weight:   0.540kg
ISBN:  

9789390358427

ISBN 10:   9390358426
Pages:   344
Publication Date:   31 July 2021
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.
Language:   English

Table of Contents

Editor’s Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: V. S. Naipaul’s Writing: A Case of Literature Undoubtedly Transforming Our Lives - J. Vijay Maharaj Chapter 1: V. S. Naipaul and Swachh Bharat… -Gollamudi Radha Krishna Murty Chapter 2: Merchant-Ivory’s The Mystic Masseur: When Caribbean Literature Meets Filmi Dreams - J. Vijay Maharaj Chapter 3: V. S. Naipaul’s The Mystic Masseur: Defining Failure and Success for the Colonial Subject - Roxana Elena Donçu Chapter 4: The Suffrage of Elvira: A Study of Politics in Pre-Independence Trinidad - Bhoendradatt Tewarie Chapter 5: Elvira You Is a Bitch - Kenneth Ramchand Chapter 6: The Trinidadian Calypso As Oral Heritage: Linguistic and Cultural Issues in the Italian Translation of V. S. Naipaul’s Miguel Street - Mariacristina Petillo Chapter 7: With a Tassa Blending: Calypso and Cultural Identity in Indo–Caribbean Fiction - Paula Morgan Chapter 8: Elitist versus Vernacular Cosmopolitanism in Naipaul’s Miguel Street - Weiwei Xu Chapter 9: The Language of Advertising and the Novel: Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas - Yi-Ping Ong Chapter 10: Character and Rebellion in A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul - Gordon Rohlehr Chapter 11: The Implications of Transtextuality in V. S. Naipaul’s The Middle Passage: The Caribbean Revisited - Zuzana Klímová Kršková Chapter 12: Did V. S. Naipaul Hate Trinidad? - Kenneth Ramchand Chapter 13: V. S. Naipaul and the 1946 Trinidad General Election - Aaron Eastley Chapter 14: Colonial Fantasy Shattered, Cosmopolitan Dream Broken: V. S. Naipaul’s Mr Stone and the Knights Companion - Weiwei Xu Chapter 15: Naipaul’s English Fable: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion - John Thieme Chapter 16: Failures in Decolonisation and the Return to the Past: Reading V. S. Naipaul - Mahesh Hapugoda Chapter 17: V. S. Naipaul and Historical Derangement - Sanjay Krishnan Chapter 18: Among the Unbelievable: Rage, Faith and Reason in Selected Writings by V. S. Naipaul - Robert Balfour About the Editor and Contributors Index

Reviews

Author Information

J. Vijay Maharaj is a lecturer in the Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. In the course of filling this role over more than two decades, she has developed deep expertise in one field—literacy. It includes the sub-categories of cultural and technological literacy but, more importantly, it encompasses the traditional literacies of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Her publications and presentations try to exemplify this.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions