The Middle Passage
The Caribbean Revisited
Naipaul, V. S.
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BOOK SYNOPSIS
In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In this classic of modern travel writing he has created a deft and remarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and four adjacent Caribbean societiescountries haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism and so thoroughly defined by the norms of Empire that they can scarcely believe that the Empire is ending.
In The Middle Passage, Naipaul watches a Trinidadian movie audience greeting Humphrey Bogarts appearance with cries of That is man! He ventures into a Trinidad slum so insalubrious that the locals call it the Gaza Strip. He follows a racially charged election campaign in British Guiana (now Guyana) and marvels at the Gallic pretension of Martinique society, which maintains the fiction that its roads are extensions of Frances routes nationales. And throughout he relates the ghastly episodes of the regions colonial past and shows how they continue to inform its language, politics, and values. The result is a work of novelistic vividness and dazzling perspicacity that displays Naipaul at the peak of his powers.
BOOK REVIEWS
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 Lawrences books on Italy, Greenes on West Africa and Pritchetts on Spain. New Statesman
Naipaul travels with the artists 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
FOR RELATED BOOKS
History Books :: Caribbean & West Indies Books :: General Books
Literary Collections Books :: Caribbean & Latin American Books
MORE BOOK INFO
ISBN: 0375708340
ISBN(13-digit): 9780375708343
Copyright: 2002
Dewey Decimal: 972.905/2
Library of Congress: 2001040848
Book Publisher: Random House Inc
Language: ENG
No. of Pages: 243
Paper Weight (lb): 0.45
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