From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes a classic of modern travel writingâa deft portrait of Trinidad and the four adjacent Caribbean societies still haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism.
âBelongs in the same category of travel writing as Lawrenceâs books on Italy, Greeneâs on West Africa and Pritchettâs on Spain.â âNew Statesman
In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In The Middle Passage, Naipaul watches a Trinidadian movie audience greeting Humphrey Bogartâs appearance with cries of âThat is man!â 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 Franceâs routes nationales. And throughout he relates the ghastly episodes of the regionâs 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.