V S Naipaul: The twilight of his travels and surprisingly candid writings

Naipaul struggles with the difficulties of understanding cultures where the history is oral, not written

This article was first published on September 21, 2010. Business Standard is republishing this article as V S Naipaul passed away on August 11, 2018. 

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I think it’s very good to ask yourself who you are and why you’re here and what has made you.” In 1974, when V S Naipaul made that statement to an audience of students, he had been asking himself those questions for over a decade. Twelve years had passed since he had written The Middle Passage, his first collection of travel writings; 16 since he had written his first novels.

The Middle Passage is still an essential Naipaul