Naipaul’s characters, like Naipaul himself, yearn for order in the midst of chaos. In some cases, like Man-man ofMiguel Street, who decides to be crucified in order to prove his holiness, they are eccentric or mad enough to be doomed to failure, even in the most traditional society. In other cases, like that of Naipaul’s own father and the protagonist of A House for Mr. Biswas, their problems seem to be the result of a number of factors, including chance, their own weakness or gullibility, and an encounter with particularly clever and vicious predators. In some of his works, however, such as In a Free State (1971), the fate of the characters is a direct result of a breakdown of society. Such characters are totally isolated, separated from their native countries, from their cultural traditions, and from one another. This vision of alienated characters in a society that has lost its structure may well be Naipaul’s prophecy of the future.

Given the bleakness of his viewpoint, it would seem that Naipaul’s works would hardly be rewarding reading. Yet although most of the characters in the early novels set in Trinidad are destined to fail, Naipaul’s comic treatment of their problems and his satire of the social relationships with which they are so obsessed prevent his readers from taking either the characters or their entanglements very seriously. Not until A House for Mr. Biswas is there any hint of the tragicomic, or even tragic, tone of Naipaul’s later novels. Even works such as In a Free State, however, whose vision of the future is extremely depressing, are compelling because of Naipaul’s skill in constructing exciting plots, as well as his genius in creating fascinating, vital characters.

Naipaul’s nonfiction works have much in common with his fiction. In both, there is brief, precise, and evocative description and a heavy reliance on accurately rendered dialogue. Whether his people are the fictional residents of Miguel Street or the real residents of the Deep South, Naipaul lets them speak for themselves. In the novels, dramatic dialogue keeps the plot in motion; in the nonfiction works, it just as effectively propels the reader forward to the next chapter, where there is sure to be an opposing viewpoint, or at least a marked variation in interpretation.

All of his technical virtuosity would be of little value if Naipaul did not have such valuable insights. Obviously, he believes that no efforts to produce a just order in society can succeed if they are based on illusions either about the past or about the present. If some misread Naipaul as yearning sentimentally for nineteenth century colonial society, they are ignoring the fact that he satirizes that world and those who are nostalgic for it, just as clearly as he satirizes the simple-minded idealists who have underestimated the difficulty of creating new orders and who, in their foolish optimism, have permitted the rapacious and the vicious to take control of societies in which there is now neither order nor justice. Some critics feel that Naipaul is basically a misogynist, so trapped in his own rage that he cannot feel compassion even for the fictional characters he has created; others insist that he should be classified as a satirist, who believes that by telling the truth he can make reform possible.

The Suffrage of Elvira

First published: 1958

Type of work: Novel

In a new West Indian democracy, a candidate for office struggles to win, and to buy, the votes necessary for his election.

The Suffrage of Elvira, Naipaul’s second published novel, has been described as a comedy of manners. Certainly, as the first chapter demonstrates, it is comic in tone. On one hand, Naipaul is dramatizing the desperate anxiety of Mr. Surujpat Harbans, as he drives his old truck up Elvira Hill on the way to arrange support for his election to the legislative council. On the other hand, the omens that so terrify Harbans seem hardly to justify his fears. Two American women stop their bicycles so unexpectedly that Harbans cannot help sliding into them, and he later hits and slightly injures a black dog, which is wandering about in the middle of the road with about as much sense as the women.

The fact that both the women and the dog do indeed prove to be recurring obstacles in Harbans’s attempt to win the election not only unifies the plot but also points out the failure of democracy, that is, universal suffrage for adults, just four years after it was so nobly declared. Indeed, at the beginning of the second chapter, Naipaul defines what democracy has meant to the islanders: put simply, new possibilities for profit.

As a candidate, Harbans must try to win the election without spending so much money that the post will be unprofitable. As his backers, the Muslim leader, a tailor, and the Hindu leader, a goldsmith, try to spend as little of their own money as possible, while using the election to consolidate their power and, if possible, to get some immediate cash benefits. By rights, Harbans thinks, it should be a simple matter of paying these leaders a reasonable sum to deliver the votes. That is the way democracy should work.

Unfortunately, Harbans’s opponent very nearly outwits him by benefiting from human irrationality. For example, the women on bicycles, who are Jehovah’s Witnesses, persuade the Spanish voters, who were committed to Harbans, that God does not wish them to vote, since the end of the world is imminent. The dog, too, causes trouble. One of her puppies, which keeps appearing and disappearing, is seen variously as a curse and a blessing; to offset the harm that this puppy has done to the campaign, the dead puppies in the litter must be publicly displayed so as to discredit the Jehovah’s Witnesses and send the Spanish voters on their way to the polling place.

Although The Suffrage of Elvira does not deal with courtly aristocrats as traditional comedy of manners does, it resembles that form in being both dramatic and satirical. Many of the passages consist of colorful dialogue, which has the quality of a scene from a play. Furthermore, the targets of satire are not only individuals but also universal types, such as the Muslim leader’s haphazard son, whose schemes and slogans alike very nearly cost Harbans his victory.

Like audiences at comedies of manners, Naipaul’s readers begin by laughing at foolish, ignorant people in a fictitious place; however, they should end by realizing that these characters actually exaggerate their own flaws. If no democracy has managed to exclude citizens who see that form of government merely as a means of enriching themselves, it is equally true that even the most principled electorate finds itself influenced by slogans, rumors, sexual scandals, calculated character assassination, appeals to religious convictions, and even free drinks and parades. There is typical Naipaulian irony in the comment made about Elvira voters and intended to be the highest praise: Once they are bought, they stay bought. One wonders if that is the most that can be expected of a democracy, whether in the Third World or in the former colonial powers.

A House for Mr. Biswas

First published: 1961

Type of work: Novel

A poor man spends his life in the quest for self-respect, financial security, and, above all, a house of his own.

A House for Mr. Biswas, the fourth and last of the early novels, is important to the study of Naipaul for several reasons. Although it resembles its predecessors in that it is set in Trinidad, in this work for the first time the comic tone becomes more nearly tragicomic. While Naipaul still treats many of the characters satirically, his protagonist, Mohun Biswas, is likable, even admirable, in his struggle to gain self-respect and the respect of others and to make enough money to buy his own house. A House for Mr. Biswas is also important because it is Naipaul’s most autobiographical work, reflecting closely his father’s life and his own childhood. For this reason, the author comments in his foreword to the 1984 Vintage Books edition of the work that, of all of his books, this is the one that means the most to him. Naipaul’s critics also place a high value on the novel. Many of them consider it to be his masterpiece.

Naipaul’s initial chapters generally indicate the theme and the major motifs of his novels. The prologue to A House for Mr. Biswas is really the end of the story, describing as it does the disastrous ending of Mr. Biswas’s life, when, at forty-six, the father of four children, penniless, debt-ridden, and ill, he is fired from his job and lies waiting to die in the ill-constructed house that was his life’s goal.

In the first chapter of A House for Mr. Biswas, as in the prologue to The Suffrage of Elvira, Naipaul uses what seem like trivial events to set the pattern of the novel. Mohun’s being born backward and having a sixth finger should not be blamed for his later troubles. It is soon evident, however, that the boy cannot keep his mind on his business, and through an improbable chain of events, his forgetting to watch a calf indirectly causes his father’s death, which in turn sentences the family to poverty. As a poor young man, then, Mohun Biswas later becomes fair game for the predatory Tulsi family, which is always on the lookout for malleable sons-in-law.

The rest of Mr. Biswas’s short life is spent in search of employment, prosperity, and a home of his own, where his wife and his children will treat him like the head of the house. Yet he fails in one job after another, and he also fails to make a home for his family. When he leaves the Tulsis, his wife refuses to go with him; when he stays with them, he is no more than a shadowy presence, who can assert himself only by sarcasm. The only relief that Mr. Biswas has from his despair comes in the developing love and loyalty of his son Anand, and even that is not enough to prevent his ultimate nervous breakdown. Like Seepersad Naipaul, Mr. Biswas eventually becomes a journalist in Port of Spain. He has, however, no real security. During his brief residence in the house that he knows is rickety, he looks back on his life, attempting to explain to himself every disastrous choice that he has made.

The story is tragic, but as the final paragraphs of A House for Mr. Biswas illustrate, Naipaul is writing now with a new complexity of tone. First, he treats the death of Mr. Biswas with appropriate compassion. Then, when the Tulsis, his favorite comic characters, invade the house at the time of the funeral, threatening its immediate collapse, the mood becomes farcical. Yet there is irony in the comedy; one realizes that the survival of the house, despite the Tulsis, is a symbolic triumph for the deceased. Finally, when Naipaul describes the return of the family to the empty house, the note is tragic. Naipaul was never again to write a purely comic novel; instead, he incorporated the comedy as merely one of a number of viewpoints from which his situations and his characters are to be seen.

A Bend in the River

First published: 1979

Type of work: Novel

Old residents try to prosper, or even to survive, in a newly liberated African state.

In A Bend in the River, as in all of his later works, Naipaul’s dominant theme is alienation. The characters in this novel are not simply outsiders, such as Mr. Biswas among the Tulsis, but bewildered individuals attempting to survive in a rapidly changing society, where the rules are changed daily. The setting is a state in central Africa that has recently undergone a revolution and a civil war. The new government is under the control of a president, actually a dictator, who rules his country with the use of informers, youth squads, disappearances, and executions.

Into this reign of terror comes the protagonist, Salim, an East African Indian who has left the coastal area where his family has lived and traded for generations and bought a shop in an isolated village located on a bend in the river, which he believes should make it an ideal trading place. On his drive across Africa, as he bribes his way through road blocks, at times Salim questions his own sanity. He reaches his destination and settles down in the partially deserted village, hoping for peace and profit, but secure in the fact that he does have a home to which he can return. Unfortunately, he soon learns that his coastal village has been destroyed in a revolution and his family has dispersed. Now Salim is truly marooned.

One of the points that Naipaul makes in A Bend in the River is that one does not have to be alone to be isolated. Salim is not alone. There are a number of expatriates in the village, Belgians, Greeks, Asians, and Indians, many of whom have remained through the turmoil, who now are waiting for life to stabilize. Every family, however, is preoccupied with itself and its own survival; though there is civility, there is no sense of community. Even his best friends, an elderly Indian couple, Shoba and Mahesh, are so preoccupied with themselves that they ignore the people and the country around them, seemingly convincing themselves that they are really living in India. When Salim visits them, there is no conversation; it is as if by ignoring the world outside their door, they can be safe from it. It is this kind of isolation that prevents the villagers from expressing outrage when the highly respected scholar and priest, Father Huismans, is murdered and mutilated, evidently because he had collected ritual masks and therefore seemed to be mocking the native religion. Many of the expatriates seem to see his death as an object lesson: this is what happens when one ventures forward, when one attempts to develop a community among peoples so different from one another.

For a time, the optimism of Father Huismans seems to be justified. Mahesh emerges from his isolation to acquire the Bigburger franchise. The president begins to construct a model town, the Domain, on the site of the old colonial suburb. Salesmen and consultants arrive from Europe, and Salim’s childhood friend, the university-educated Indar, appears, a guest of the government, to work at the university turned polytechnic, whose chief function now is to train young men to be members of the president’s staff. Salim’s life becomes even more interesting when he has an affair with the wife of the president’s white adviser. When he recognizes that he is beginning to believe the president’s pronouncements, however, Salim feels the need to get some perspective and takes a trip to London.

When he returns to Africa, Salim finds that the promise of progress was an illusion. Caught between the oppressive president and his trigger-happy troops and a newly formed liberation army, everyone is terrified. Salim’s business is nationalized, he loses most of his savings in the difficult process of getting money out of the country, and, finally, he is jailed, warned, and forced to flee the country.

The situation in A Bend in the River is what Naipaul finds characteristic of the Third World: For all the talk about a master plan, the leaders of these new countries have no real direction in mind. They cannot decide whether to destroy the vestiges of Europe or to mimic it, as the president did with his Domain, and they cannot seem to develop an orderly, progressive society. The only perceivable pattern is the survival of the vicious. As Salim says, to someone who does not live in these countries, their governments appear comic, and certainly there are many comic scenes in A Bend in the River. Yet, as Salim realizes, one who does choose to stay in the postcolonial chaos can lose everything, including one’s life.

The Enigma of Arrival

First published: 1987

Type of work: Novel

In rural England, an expatriate discovers that traditional societies are as susceptible to change as the Third World country from which he came.

In The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul turns to the situation of the expatriate who lives as an alien in a traditional society. The narrator, a writer from Trinidad, has come to settle in the English countryside. From his cottage near Salisbury, he ventures forth to look at remnants of the past, prehistoric Stonehenge, deserted farm cottages, and rusting reminders of World War II, and to discover that even this seemingly unchanging landscape and the people who inhabit it are not exempt from change.

The structure of The Enigma of Arrival is more like that of an extremely digressive travel book than a work of fiction. One idea leads to another in the mind of the narrator, who is so close to Naipaul himself as to make it difficult to remember the distinction, and one anecdote suggests another. The connection is thematic and psychological, not chronological. Thus, in the second part of the book, the narrator moves from a journey to England that he has recently completed to his first journey out of Trinidad eighteen years before, while revealing his first impressions of airplane travel, of New York, and of London.

Although there is a great deal of lyrical description of nature in The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul also tells the stories of people whom he has met along the way, such as Angela, an older, more worldly Italian girl at his London boardinghouse who became one of his closest friends. Late in his Salisbury stay, the narrator receives a letter from Angela, whom he has not seen for thirty years. Outside his window the aspens sway, and he thinks of watching them grow, seeing two of them fall; inside, he sees the variations in Angela’s handwriting as she relates the events of her life, and he is acutely conscious of the fact that though one circles in life, sometimes returning, everything is in constant flux.

In the third segment of The Enigma of Arrival, symbolically entitled “Ivy,” the narrator focuses on the people who have clung for decades to the area where he is living, especially on those associated with the manor, such as the gardener Pitton, his elderly father, and the car-hire man, all of whom can describe what it was like on the estate when there were sixteen gardeners instead of only one. Then the reclusive landlord emerges from his seclusion and takes an interest in the world around him. The narrator gets to know the landlord’s cousin, a personable man who calls himself a writer. There is a brief season when everyone seems to be happy.

Naipaul, however, always points out that the only thing on which one can rely is the certainty of change. The gardener is fired; the landlord returns to his isolation; the would-be writer becomes an alcoholic and commits suicide; the caretaker dies; his wife remarries; the little children’s house on the estate is closed off with barbed wire; and the narrator knows that it is time for him to leave. In his epilogue, “The Ceremony of Farewell,” he explains the new insights that came during his stay in Salisbury, involving primarily a new acceptance of the mystery of life itself.

Half a Life

First published: 2001

Type of work: Novel

An Indian of mixed ancestry seeks a sense of his own identity first in England and then in Africa.

Half a Life is another of Naipaul’s stories of alienation. In this case, however, the central character is not merely frustrated in his efforts to attain a particular goal; when the book ends, he has reached middle age without finding a purpose for his life.

The book begins with a seemingly simple question. Willie Chandran, the protagonist, asks his father why his middle name is “Somerset.” At this point, the author turns the narrative over to Willie’s father. His explanation begins in the 1890’s, when Willie’s great-grandfather, a priest, left his impoverished temple for the court of the maharaja, thus beginning his family’s movement up the social ladder. Willie’s father was meant to attend a professional school and to marry the daughter of his college principal. However, he decided to rebel against his Brahman family by taking up with a black, low-caste girl. Since he did not love or even like the woman he had chosen, his home life was miserable. Realizing that their two mixed-race children, Willie and Sarojini, had no future in India, the elder Chandran tried to obtain a college scholarship for his son by contacting English visitors to India with whom he had become casually acquainted, including the writer W. Somerset Maugham, for whom Willie was named. However, either his pleas were ignored or, as in Maugham’s case, received a perfunctory response.

The author now takes control of the story. Willie’s father has obtained a scholarship for him at a mediocre college in London. There Willie finds he can invent himself, glamorizing his lineage by making his mother a member of an ancient Christian sect and calling his father one of the maharajah’s courtiers. Willie becomes a member of a bohemian immigrant group, writes a radio script for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and produces twenty-six short stories, which are published in book form. He even gains some badly needed sexual expertise. However, a visit from his sister Sarojini shakes his growing self-confidence. As Sarojini points out, Willie’s scholarship will soon expire, and he still has no plans for the future. An encounter with Ana, a girl from Portuguese East Africa who also has a mixed racial background, seems providential. They fall in love, and Willie decides to go home with her. The narrative now jumps ahead eighteen years. Willie tells Ana that he wants a divorce. He is leaving because, as he says, he can no longer live her life.

The final section of the book is Willie’s account of those eighteen years in Mozambique, told to his sister Sarojini at her home in Berlin, Germany. Willie and Ana had both assumed that he would make himself useful on her estate. However, he spends his time socializing with the local landowners, most of them of mixed racial backgrounds, all of them boastful and pretentious. When violence erupts and it becomes clear that the colonial empire is doomed, they begin to flee, and Willie leaves, too, evidently still searching for his identity and for the purpose of his existence so he can live more than “half a life.”