Overview

V. S. Naipaul's first travel book takes us on a rich and emotional journey to a place of the greatest interest - his birthplace. In 1960, Dr Eric Williams, the first Prime Minister of independent Trinidad, invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In this classic of modern travel writing he created a deft and remarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and the Caribbean societies of four adjacent countries, Guyana, Surinam, Martinique and Jamaica. Haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism, and so thoroughly defined by the norms of Empire that it can scarcely comprehend its end, Naipaul catches this poor, topsy-turvy world at a critical moment, a time when racial and political assertion had yet to catch up - a perfect subject for the acute understanding and dazzling prose of this great writer.

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9780330522953

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Reviews

Naipaul travels with the artist's eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning. -- Evelyn Waugh Belongs in the same category of travel writing as Lawrence's books on Italy, Greene's on West Africa and Pritchett's on Spain. * New Statesman * Where earlier travellers enthused or recoiled, Mr Naipaul explains. His tone is critical but humane, and he tempers his inevitable indignation with an admirable sense of comedy. * Observer * Dazzling reportorial skills and a sharp historical mind. * New York Times Book Review *

The coolest literary eye and the most lucid prose we have. - The New York Times Book Review Belongs in the same category of travel writing as Lawrence's books on Italy, Greene's on West Africa and Pritchett's on Spain. - New Statesman Naipaul travels with the artist's eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning. -Evelyn Waugh Where earlier travelers enthused or recoiled, Mr. Naipaul explains. His tone is critical but humane, and he tempers his inevitable indignation with an admirable sense of comedy. - The Observer Dazzling reportorial skills and a sharp historical mind. - The New York Times

The coolest literary eye and the most lucid prose we have. - The New York Times Book Review <br> Belongs in the same category of travel writing as Lawrence's books on Italy, Greene's on West Africa and Pritchett's on Spain. - New Statesman <br> Naipaul travels with the artist's eye and ear and his observations are sharply discerning. -Evelyn Waugh <br> Where earlier travelers enthused or recoiled, Mr. Naipaul explains. His tone is critical but humane, and he tempers his inevitable indignation with an admirable sense of comedy. - The Observer <br> Dazzling reportorial skills and a sharp historical mind. - The New York Times

Author Information

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including Half a Life, A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River and most recently The Masque of Africa, and a collection of correspondence, Letters Between a Father and Son. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

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