V. S.
Naipaul (1932-2018), born in Trinidad of Indian parents before moving to
Britain, defeated the attempts of critics to attach him to a particular belief,
society, place, or race. Freed by immigration, he can aspire to a certain
universality, using the human condition as his subject-matter; on the other
hand, like so many of his central characters, he is free only in the sense of
drifting, and the mainly comic mood of his earlier novels is overlaid in his
later work by the sadness and realization of rootlessness. In this 1976 study, Michael Thorpe traces Naipaul's development and
growth in stature as a novelist who is now recognized as being in a class by
himself among Caribbean writers.