A Way in the World

This is a good and challenging novel. It is also perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical, and brazenly so. There is no attempt on the part of the narrator (whom Naipaul uses, first to explain how the colonial baggage affects his characters [characters, incidentally, whom you've met in other Naipaul novels], and then to represent the brainchild of a number of "unwritten" stories told in "A Way in the World's" pages) to distance himself from Naipaul's own experiences in Trinidad, England, and then all over the world, as the "voice" of the former colonials. This weight of this book's message comes late, making a challenging read worthwhile.

An excellent book. At times it is difficult but it is not impossible. A series of failed revolutionaries and their follies occupy the mind of a narrator, an aspiring writer seeking his place in the world. Modern day revolutions like socialism come and fail, not very different from the past where the imperial powers vied for power with a host of different racial groups in South America. This is my first book I've read from V. S. Naipaul after hearing that he won the Nobel Prize. Based on this, I'm going to read more.

My primary interest in this book is the fifth story, "On the Run." This is the fictional rendering of an actual person, viz. CLR James, the Black literary, left-wing politician originally from Trinidad, the home of Naipaul. In the story James is called "Lebrun," and some of the unimportant details have been slightly altered. James, who died in 1989 in his eighties, has recently enjoyed a bit of posthumous lionization at the hands of certain left-wing writers. While Naipaul deals with him with utmost gentleness, there is no exxcaping the fact that James was an inveterate sorehead, a notorious womanizer, an energetic blowhard, a careful organizer of his own coterie in several countries. Naipaul suggests that there may also have been a sinister side to Lebrun/James. He doesn't insist, but the suggestion is there. Let the reader decide !

This is an unusual - perhaps even unique - variety of novel, having at first glance no discernible structure and seeming like a series of meditations on the experience of West-Indian colonialism, linked by personal reminiscences of the author. It is only when the book is finished that the masterful integration of the complexities of plot, descriptions and reflections become fully obvious. Much of the work can be seen as an extended series of imagined scenes and dialogues inspired by the dominant themes of the writer's earlier non-fiction work "The Loss of El Dorado", itself a powerful and searing account of the discovery of Trinidad, its capture from the Spaniards by the British, its failed role as a springboard for incitement of revolution on the South American mainland, and its transformation into a slave society. Whereas the earlier work was strictly factual the form of the later novel allows Naipaul to use the full power of his imagination to visualise the motivations of historical players such as Raleigh and Miranda and their reactions to specific situations. There are a host of other characters however, all probably with a basis in actuality, all are realised with the same degree of keen, indeed merciless, perception that characterises Naipaul's fiction at its best. The scenes of action shift rapidly in both time and locale - from the Elizabethan age, on through the turmoil of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, right through the twentieth century to our own day, with Trinidad, Venezuela, London and an unnamed African colony (Uganda?) providing the backdrop. Those who know these societies today will be impressed by the uncanny accuracy with which their very "feel" is portrayed. This is the work of a master in his prime - wonderful!

Mr. Naipaul never ceases to amaze in the depth and fertility of his imagination. Weaving history with fiction, biography and comedy we are never sure where he is leading in a tale spanning continents and centuries. It is a prose poetry at its finest, enveloping the reader with texts that only Naipaul his capable of. To say V.S.Naipaul is a an exquiste writer; a writer's writer would be an understatement. A Way In The World represents a novel of such genius, I was and continue to be in awe of the magnificent and masterly control of the English language. I am in love with writing again. Thank you V.S. Naipual