Naipaul, Conrad, Kureishi

V.S. NAIPAUL

NAIPAUL Trinidad

Naipaul is a colonial writer of Caribbean origins – he comes from the island of and

descended from an Indian family.

Trinidad, the island where he lived, was a British colony and its inhabitants saw England as the

mother country.

He was a very good student at school in Trinidad and this allowed him to win a scholarship to go to

study in London, the city of culture and development (University of Oxford)

1950s

The were the period of mass migration of Indian people to the metropolitan centres => most

of them wished to move to London in search of better life conditions – but Naipaul’s family was

wealthy and the only reason why he wanted to move to England was to have a better education / to

become a great writer.

He decided to settle down in England, but it kept travelling, especially in India and Africa. Nobel

He wrote a lot of books and novels and won plenty of prizes: the most important one is the

prize which he received in 2001 – he died in London in 2018.

NAIPAUL’S IN-BETWEEN POSITION

• From the position of colonized to the condition of British-educated cosmopolitan writer

• From the periphery (less civilised countries in poor economic conditions) to the metropolitan centre

(in-between two societies and cultures)

• He often criticizes ex-colonized societies for their incapacity to react and reconstruct their identity

after independence

• The Caribbean (and Trinidad in particular) is represented as a claustrophobic environment, inevitably

destined to fail (a place where it is difficult to emerge).

• The colonized has always lived outside history. He has passively accepted colonization internalizing

the idea that nothing can be done (=> see Frantz Fanon and Colonization of the minds) => Franz

Fanon said that the main damage is the Colonization of the mind, because people in the colonies

were taught that they needed European people to be better themselves, they felt inferior compared

to them.

TRINIDAD (Caribbean/West Indies) and COLONIAL HISTORY

Trinidad suffered from a background of colonisation and this characterised a very long part of history

and cultural influence.

Since Columbus discovered America in 1492, the European countries (ex. Spain, Portugal, France,

Holland) focused their political attention on this country and tried to colonize some of these places

to take advantage of their resources (coffee, sugar, cotton) => Great Britain colonized and controlled

a great part of these islands.

Trinidad is now a single national State and can be considered an industrial island – famous for its

university. from 1802 to 1962.

The island was a colony of British Empire There are some steps:

− The Amerindians, the local indigenous peoples, were completely suppressed

− The colonial system was based on plantations and slavery (afro-Caribbean people and Indian

Caribbean people). There was a Triangular Trade:

• First passage: all starts from GB where colonisers used to bring goods to AFRICA in order to buy slaves

from slaveowners

• Middle passage: slaves were transferred from AFRICA to the CARIBBEAN

• Last step: From the CARIBBEAN back to GB with resources coming from the plantations

1833

Slavery was abolished in with the act of emancipation.

People were set free but, in the meantime, the British government couldn’t agree with the loss of

such an important trade and so encouraged another migration from the Indian subcontinent to the

Caribbean. Indentures Labourers,

Persuaded by the British advertising campaigns, people who were living in

poor conditions in India, decided to move to England in search of jobs and better lives, obviously

paid, but as sort of slaves.

− Now Trinidadian population is a diaspora population (Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian).

They didn’t mix each other, they are still forming two different ethnic groups that maintain

their religions, their cultures. Decolonisation

We can't really say WHEN there was the beginning of and the END of it.

nd

But we can say that the 2 World War is considered a watershed; it represents a border between

the colonial and post-colonialism and during this period most of the colonies of the British empire

became independent and decolonisation began.

It also represents a period in which many colonised people moved and helped the British empire to

win the war: they volunteered in the army because they felt it as their duty: they considered

themselves children of the Empire and London as their mother country.

1948 British Nationality Act

In the gave British citizenship to all people living in the ex- colonies .

In this year the Empire Windrush arrived. The Caribbean people in England were called “The

Windrush Generation”: the Windrush was the name of the first ship which left from the

Caribbean to arrive in England with a cargo of Caribbean people migrating to England (= the

beginning of a migration). It is also called “the reverse colonization” => before people migrated from

Europe to colonies, then from colonies to England).

reasons

The most important behind mass migration are:

 Poor economic conditions in the colonies

 Reward for enlisting in the British army (during the II World War)

 Colonial perception of London as the Mother Country (the centre)

 Recruiting campaign in England to attract migrants: British needed migrants because there

was a need of help to rebuilt everything that was destroyed during the 2nd World War; they

need especially workers in the field of the health system (nursery) and transports.

NAIPAUL’S WRITING

He was a novelist and journalist, as well as working for the BBC he was also a travel writer; he kept

accounts of his travels mainly in Africa and India.

We can distinguish 3 main phases of writing:

Early phase:

▪ more comic and ironic writing, very funny novels, mainly set in Trinidad

Second phase:

▪ more pessimistic phase, more focused on the negative consequences of

colonisation --> how Trinidadian people couldn't react to colonisation

Third one

▪ is based on chronicles of life and travel

His most important works are :

Mystic Masseur

❖ “The “-1957. It’s a comic novel set in colonial Trinidad about a frustrated

writer of Indian descent who becomes a successful politician due to his dubious talent as a

mystic masseur who can cure any illness

Street”- 1959.

❖ “Miguel It's a collection of short stories depicting the vital community of a

poor area in Port of Spain with good humour and pathos.

house of Mr Biswas”-1961.

❖ “A It's a tragicomic novel dealing with second and third

generation Indians settled in Trinidad.

middle passage: the Caribbean revisited”-1962.

❖ “The It's an essay/travelogue based

on a year-long trip through Trinidad, British Guiana, Suriname, Martinique, and Jamaica in

1961. Its topics dealt with include the legacy of slavery and colonialism, race relations, the

roles of South Asian immigrants in the various countries, and differences in language, culture,

and economics.

Bend in the River”-1979.

❖ *“A a life”

❖ “Half -2001. It's a novel about an Indian boy who leaves India in the 1950s to go to

London to study. There, he leads a life as a different man, faking the facts of his life. At the

end he drops the mask and comes to peace with his background.

In Naipaul’s novels he explores the personal and collective alienation, especially experienced in new

nations that were struggling to integrate their native and west-colonial heritages.

In 2001 he won the Nobel prize by the Swedish Academy “for having united perceptive narrative and

incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”.

He tells the stories under the perspective of the colonized.

*A BEND IN THE RIVER – SUMMARY

A BEND IN THE RIVER takes place in an unnamed postcolonial African town.

The main character, Salim, narrates the story, which begins when he moves away from his family to

the interior of the country to run a town shop, bought from an old family friend Nazruddin.

Salim is of Muslim Indian descent, but his family has lived in coastal Africa for many generations, so

he is neither fully Muslim Indian nor fully African.

He begins his new life, makes friends with other expatriates, and meets Zabeth, a local woman who

buys items from his shop, located on the bend of a river, to resell in her village.

Zabeth has a son named Ferdinand and she wanted her son to get a formal education, so she sent

him to attend the secondary school in the town, run by father Husimans, a European priest with a

love of African culture who often travels to villages to acquire objects of cultural significance, such as

masks and statuettes.

In the meantime, Salim gets the news that there has been a violent revolt on the coast and his family

has dispersed.

One of their servants, called Ali, has asked to be sent to live with Salim. He charms the locals, who

give him the name Metty, from the French word métis, meaning mixed-race.

Thereafter, a Salim's friend named Indar, a rich boy from his coastal hometown, comes to visit. He

stays in the Domain, a government sponsored complex, outside of the town, with a polytechnic and

European style houses.

By spending time in the Domain with Indar, Salim feels that he finally has access to the most

glamorous life he’s ever wanted. He also meets Yvette, the wife of Indar’s friend Raymond, with

whom he starts an affair. Raymond is a historian and writer who was a close associate of the

President.

But as their relationship progressed, Salim felt more and more uncomfortable about his affair with

Yvette and, feeling that she saw him as another version of Raymond, he attacked her and their affair

fizzled out.

Because of the political unrest that began to grow, Salim decides to go to London visiting Nazruddin

and there he gets engaged to his daughter Kareisha.

When he returns to the town on the river, he discovers that the State has given ownership of his

shop to Théotime, an inexperienced African, and kept Salim on as manager and chauffeur.