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The Mimic Men
'A Tolstoyan spirit...The so-called third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist' - John Updike, "New Yorker". Born of Indian heritage, raised in the British-dependent Caribbean island of Isabella, and educated in England, forty-year-old Ralph Singh has spent a lifetime struggling against the torment of cultural displacement. Now in exile from his native country, he has taken up residence at a quaint hotel in a London suburb, where he is writing his memoirs in an attempt to impose order on a chaotic existence. His memories lead him to recognize the cultural paradoxes and tainted fantasies of his colonial childhood and later his attempts to fit in at school, his short-lived marriage to an ostenatious white woman. But it is the return of Isabella and his subsequent immersion in the roiling political atmosphere of a newly self-governing nation - every kind of racial fantasy taking wing - that ultimately provide Singh with the necessary insight to discover the crux of his disillusionment. 'Ambitious and successful...Extremely perceptive' - "The Times". 'The sweep of Naipaul's imagination, the brilliant fictional frame that expresses it, are in my view eithout equal today' - "New York Times Book Review".
278 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
About the author
V.S. Naipaul
129 books1,644 followersNaipaul was born and raised in Trinidad, to which his grandfathers had emigrated from India as indentured servants. He is known for the wistfully comic early novels of Trinidad, the bleaker novels of a wider world remade by the passage of peoples, and the vigilant chronicles of his life and travels, all written in characteristic, widely admired, prose.
At 17, he won a Trinidad Government scholarship to study abroad. In the introduction to the 20th-anniversary edition of A House for Mr. Biswas, he reflected that the scholarship would have allowed him to study any subject at any institution of higher learning in the British Commonwealth, but that he chose to go to Oxford to do a simple degree in English. He went, he wrote, "in order at last to write...." In August 1950, Naipaul boarded a Pan Am flight to New York, continuing the next day by boat to London.
50 years later, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
At 17, he won a Trinidad Government scholarship to study abroad. In the introduction to the 20th-anniversary edition of A House for Mr. Biswas, he reflected that the scholarship would have allowed him to study any subject at any institution of higher learning in the British Commonwealth, but that he chose to go to Oxford to do a simple degree in English. He went, he wrote, "in order at last to write...." In August 1950, Naipaul boarded a Pan Am flight to New York, continuing the next day by boat to London.
50 years later, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
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November 11, 2017
The ramp up of Part 1 seems unusually long, though hardly a slog. In it Naipaul’s classic, young, post-colonial island man takes up residence in a shared house in post-war Kensington, a part of London that was once seedy and cheap according to the author. The house is full of Maltese and Italians and various sad alcoholics who fall down a lot. Leini, an Italo-Maltese woman living in the dank basement, gets a party together to attend the baptism of her fatherless child. It’s a sad affair.
The narrator, Ranjit Kripalsingh, shortened to Ralph Singh, then marries an emotionally damaged young woman with magnificent breasts who by acting out randomly alienates anyone who might befriend them as a couple. Soon a retreat to the author’s native isle of Isabella seems prudent. On docking, Singh’s mother, learning she now has a white daughter-in-law, makes a scene. Soon thereafter Singh gets creative with a legacy of wasteland and becomes a wealthy developer. The wife gets worse due to the materialism. Soon they’ve gone their separate ways and Singh has begun to write. It’s like The Mystic Masseur but gutted of the humor. The reader, like the writer, dutifully soldiers on.
Part 2 reverts to Singh’s childhood. Suddenly, the book feels more like a Naipaul novel. In it we get the story of his early life on the tropical island of Isabella. His father, an underpaid school teacher, marries into a family a few years before they grow wealthy as the island’s sole Coca-Cola bottler. Formerly seen as a good match, the father is now deprecated by the wife’s family. The now affluent wife comes to believe she’s married beneath herself. The father later becomes a millenarian figure leading disaffected dock workers to a brief idyll in the mountains.
It was not until page 117 that I finally discovered what I’d been missing. It was Naipaul’s frank talk of race. On a school outing, for example, the beautifully Chinese Hok is discovered to be the son of a black mother. As Singh tells us:
Hok ignores his black mother in the street. His teacher is appalled. Hok is made to acknowledge her if only by the passing of a few simple words. Suddenly, the boy known in class as Confucius, is persona non grata.
Whoa. From here on the novel begins to fascinate. We’re back in Naipaul Land. And—again—one feels what a privilege it is to read him. Once the narrator moves on to tell the story of his island childhood the old magic ensnares us. I wouldn’t say that Part 1 is inferior, but I was unable to get traction in the story until p. 117.
Part 3 may be brilliant. Time will be helpful in determining that. In it Singh recounts the rise and fall of his political career on Isabella with hardly a dabbling in the substantive issues. The novel becomes not one of scenes and description and dialog—A House for Mr Biswas is the book to go to for that. Here, the novel’s later pages are almost wholly about the actions and opinions of men as they manipulate others’s emotions and reap praise and celebrity. Here, it might be said, the novel becomes all voice, all Singh’s persona, and the concreteness of detail commensurately flattens, dissipates. The world withdraws. A collapse is coming. Singh retreats inward. One has the sense in the end of a lost person, the homunculus peering out of his vessel in desperation, withdrawing, giving up the world.
The narrator, Ranjit Kripalsingh, shortened to Ralph Singh, then marries an emotionally damaged young woman with magnificent breasts who by acting out randomly alienates anyone who might befriend them as a couple. Soon a retreat to the author’s native isle of Isabella seems prudent. On docking, Singh’s mother, learning she now has a white daughter-in-law, makes a scene. Soon thereafter Singh gets creative with a legacy of wasteland and becomes a wealthy developer. The wife gets worse due to the materialism. Soon they’ve gone their separate ways and Singh has begun to write. It’s like The Mystic Masseur but gutted of the humor. The reader, like the writer, dutifully soldiers on.
Part 2 reverts to Singh’s childhood. Suddenly, the book feels more like a Naipaul novel. In it we get the story of his early life on the tropical island of Isabella. His father, an underpaid school teacher, marries into a family a few years before they grow wealthy as the island’s sole Coca-Cola bottler. Formerly seen as a good match, the father is now deprecated by the wife’s family. The now affluent wife comes to believe she’s married beneath herself. The father later becomes a millenarian figure leading disaffected dock workers to a brief idyll in the mountains.
It was not until page 117 that I finally discovered what I’d been missing. It was Naipaul’s frank talk of race. On a school outing, for example, the beautifully Chinese Hok is discovered to be the son of a black mother. As Singh tells us:
We had converted our island into one big secret. Anything that touched on everyday life excited laughter when it was mentioned in a classroom: the name of a shop, the name if a street, the name of street-corner foods. The laughter denied our knowledge of these things to which after the hours of school we were to return.
Hok ignores his black mother in the street. His teacher is appalled. Hok is made to acknowledge her if only by the passing of a few simple words. Suddenly, the boy known in class as Confucius, is persona non grata.
It was for this betrayal into ordinariness that I knew he was crying. It was at this betrayal that the brave among us were tittering. It wasn’t only that the mother was black and of the people, though that was a point; it was because he had been expelled from the private sphere of fantasy [the school] where lay his true life. . . . I felt I had been given an unfair glimpse of another person’s deepest secrets. I felt on that street, shady, with gardens, and really pretty as I now recall it, though then to me wholly drab, that Hok had dreams like mine, was probably also marked, and lived in imagination far from us, far from the island on which he, like my father, like myself, had been shipwrecked. (p.117)
Whoa. From here on the novel begins to fascinate. We’re back in Naipaul Land. And—again—one feels what a privilege it is to read him. Once the narrator moves on to tell the story of his island childhood the old magic ensnares us. I wouldn’t say that Part 1 is inferior, but I was unable to get traction in the story until p. 117.
Part 3 may be brilliant. Time will be helpful in determining that. In it Singh recounts the rise and fall of his political career on Isabella with hardly a dabbling in the substantive issues. The novel becomes not one of scenes and description and dialog—A House for Mr Biswas is the book to go to for that. Here, the novel’s later pages are almost wholly about the actions and opinions of men as they manipulate others’s emotions and reap praise and celebrity. Here, it might be said, the novel becomes all voice, all Singh’s persona, and the concreteness of detail commensurately flattens, dissipates. The world withdraws. A collapse is coming. Singh retreats inward. One has the sense in the end of a lost person, the homunculus peering out of his vessel in desperation, withdrawing, giving up the world.
February 21, 2024
"We came into the Indian areas where rice and sugarcane grew. My father spoke of the voyage to a strange hemisphere so remote, to complete our own little bastard world."
"We pretended to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life, mimic men of the New World in one unknown corner."
"The order to which the colonial politician succeeds is not his order. It is something he is compelled to destroy. It comes with his emergence and is a condition of his power."
"I no longer seek to find beauty in the lives of the mean and the oppressed. Hate oppression and fear the oppressed."
('Ralph' Ranjit Singh's thoughts as told by V S Naipaul)
************
Naipaul wrote 'Mimic Men' in Kampala, Uganda where he had accepted an invitation to Makerere University. He let it be known that a Writer-In-Residence was just that, refusing to lecture or attend faculty functions, rarely coming out of his cottage. The result was this 1967 novel, a departure from his earlier comic stories and narrative fiction. He enters the mind of 'Ralph' Singh, suspiciously similar to Naipaul, an Indian from a fictitious post-colonial West Indies island.
Singh, through a series of flashbacks, recalls years in London attending university on scholarship from the colonies after WWII. He rooms in a dingy boarding house, with refugees and misfit expats, frequenting prostitutes. He meets Sandra, a British middle class student, who resembles Naipaul's first wife Pat. Within a short time they are married. He returns home with her, to the horror of his Hindu mother who is brokering his marriage with suitable girls from the island.
Singh inherits a rundown citrus farm on the outskirts of the Isabella capital and he unexpectedly turns it into a lucrative housing subdivision. Loans from US banks and post-war expansion bring him success and the envy of other colonial elites, who often marry expatriate spouses. He associates his luck with Sandra, who is increasingly derisive of the social scene. As their love wanes he suspects that she will leave him and only he would remain shipwrecked on the island.
Singh was a son of an educated but poor father and a mother from an illustrious family, echoes of Naipaul's life. He recalls school years and classmates competing for status. Dwelling in self doubts and delusions of grandeur he daydreams of descendants from Aryan plains, now toilers in the fields of sugarcane. A caste system of Europeans, Asians and Africans looked down upon each other. Teenage angst combines with colonial alienation as he resolves to escape the island.
Singh senses the class order breaking down after WWII. His father becomes a labor strike leader. He trades business for politics as nationalist movements begin. Elected he realizes no consensus is possible in the fragmented society. Civil service and land remain in the hands of foreigners, the trappings of power held by mimic men. Industry involves packing foreign products in foreign containers. Entangled in provincial disputes he returns to Britain from the island.
This novel is set within the thoughts of the narrator Singh. The incidents and characters recalled are subordinated to his introspection. If Naipaul was less intriguing it wouldn't be as interesting. Relations between man and woman, friend and foe, alien and native, seen through the disillusioned eyes of Singh, are disturbing but familiar. Naipaul was a voice of the diaspora, ex-slaves and indentured servants adrift on post-colonial seas, with a relentlessly dark view of the island.
"We pretended to be learning, to be preparing ourselves for life, mimic men of the New World in one unknown corner."
"The order to which the colonial politician succeeds is not his order. It is something he is compelled to destroy. It comes with his emergence and is a condition of his power."
"I no longer seek to find beauty in the lives of the mean and the oppressed. Hate oppression and fear the oppressed."
('Ralph' Ranjit Singh's thoughts as told by V S Naipaul)
************
Naipaul wrote 'Mimic Men' in Kampala, Uganda where he had accepted an invitation to Makerere University. He let it be known that a Writer-In-Residence was just that, refusing to lecture or attend faculty functions, rarely coming out of his cottage. The result was this 1967 novel, a departure from his earlier comic stories and narrative fiction. He enters the mind of 'Ralph' Singh, suspiciously similar to Naipaul, an Indian from a fictitious post-colonial West Indies island.
Singh, through a series of flashbacks, recalls years in London attending university on scholarship from the colonies after WWII. He rooms in a dingy boarding house, with refugees and misfit expats, frequenting prostitutes. He meets Sandra, a British middle class student, who resembles Naipaul's first wife Pat. Within a short time they are married. He returns home with her, to the horror of his Hindu mother who is brokering his marriage with suitable girls from the island.
Singh inherits a rundown citrus farm on the outskirts of the Isabella capital and he unexpectedly turns it into a lucrative housing subdivision. Loans from US banks and post-war expansion bring him success and the envy of other colonial elites, who often marry expatriate spouses. He associates his luck with Sandra, who is increasingly derisive of the social scene. As their love wanes he suspects that she will leave him and only he would remain shipwrecked on the island.
Singh was a son of an educated but poor father and a mother from an illustrious family, echoes of Naipaul's life. He recalls school years and classmates competing for status. Dwelling in self doubts and delusions of grandeur he daydreams of descendants from Aryan plains, now toilers in the fields of sugarcane. A caste system of Europeans, Asians and Africans looked down upon each other. Teenage angst combines with colonial alienation as he resolves to escape the island.
Singh senses the class order breaking down after WWII. His father becomes a labor strike leader. He trades business for politics as nationalist movements begin. Elected he realizes no consensus is possible in the fragmented society. Civil service and land remain in the hands of foreigners, the trappings of power held by mimic men. Industry involves packing foreign products in foreign containers. Entangled in provincial disputes he returns to Britain from the island.
This novel is set within the thoughts of the narrator Singh. The incidents and characters recalled are subordinated to his introspection. If Naipaul was less intriguing it wouldn't be as interesting. Relations between man and woman, friend and foe, alien and native, seen through the disillusioned eyes of Singh, are disturbing but familiar. Naipaul was a voice of the diaspora, ex-slaves and indentured servants adrift on post-colonial seas, with a relentlessly dark view of the island.
August 16, 2018
The Mimic Men is a work of fiction about a man who grew up on a Caribbean island called Isabella (not a real island). As an adult he moved to England for a while, came back to Isabella, trying to help reconstruct it after it stopped being an English colony and ultimately failing.
Ralph Singh is a man who tries to Anglicize himself. In school he changes his name to Ralph from Ranjit Kripalsingh. The story fluctuates back and forth between the two cultures as Ralph Singh tries to come to terms with his identity inside a Caribbean culture while trying to apply English attributes to his person and life. There are wheels within wheels because Singh is a man of Caribbean culture but also from Indian culture; yet he is not Indian either. He is Indian suffused with the culture of the islands.
The story has its moments. When he describes his life on the island, his family and relatives, I see glances of a vividness in his culture among Indians, whites and those of African descent, not to mention all the ones who share each race, which is quite common in the Caribbean. But these moments only occasionally flash here and there.
Singh tries to blend into the Englishness of the U.K. He marries a white woman, has affairs with many others, but he cannot warm up to the people or their way of life. However, going back to Isabella, he no longer fits in there either.
Really, I had a hard time understanding or caring about the characters of this novel. A lot that was going on was not clear to me, at least I failed to see the point. The only thing I found interesting were the different characters Singh describes as they come into his life.
The least interesting part of the novel is when Singh joins a group of Socialists in the U.K. Reading about him and his co-horts trying to promote these ideals was just plain boring. Describing people enamored with "causes" holds no interest for me.
I wish he had spent more time giving the reader better views of his characters but Naipaul has a habit of writing about people without any sense of who anyone is. Everyone is a stranger to him. It is as if the narrator suffers from some sort of emotional detachment and is incapable of caring about anyone or anything.
He gets away with it in his non-fiction, at least in the one non-fiction book of his I read (An Area of Darkness, his travelogue of his time in India), but it simply does not brighten this existentially bland account of people from either island who I know from personal experience are filled with so much personality and color.
Ralph Singh is a man who tries to Anglicize himself. In school he changes his name to Ralph from Ranjit Kripalsingh. The story fluctuates back and forth between the two cultures as Ralph Singh tries to come to terms with his identity inside a Caribbean culture while trying to apply English attributes to his person and life. There are wheels within wheels because Singh is a man of Caribbean culture but also from Indian culture; yet he is not Indian either. He is Indian suffused with the culture of the islands.
The story has its moments. When he describes his life on the island, his family and relatives, I see glances of a vividness in his culture among Indians, whites and those of African descent, not to mention all the ones who share each race, which is quite common in the Caribbean. But these moments only occasionally flash here and there.
Singh tries to blend into the Englishness of the U.K. He marries a white woman, has affairs with many others, but he cannot warm up to the people or their way of life. However, going back to Isabella, he no longer fits in there either.
Really, I had a hard time understanding or caring about the characters of this novel. A lot that was going on was not clear to me, at least I failed to see the point. The only thing I found interesting were the different characters Singh describes as they come into his life.
The least interesting part of the novel is when Singh joins a group of Socialists in the U.K. Reading about him and his co-horts trying to promote these ideals was just plain boring. Describing people enamored with "causes" holds no interest for me.
I wish he had spent more time giving the reader better views of his characters but Naipaul has a habit of writing about people without any sense of who anyone is. Everyone is a stranger to him. It is as if the narrator suffers from some sort of emotional detachment and is incapable of caring about anyone or anything.
He gets away with it in his non-fiction, at least in the one non-fiction book of his I read (An Area of Darkness, his travelogue of his time in India), but it simply does not brighten this existentially bland account of people from either island who I know from personal experience are filled with so much personality and color.
October 20, 2017
Life Escapes Me.....I Escape Life
Perhaps colonial rule in much of the world did produce mimic men. They were those who modeled themselves or at least were modeled on patterns produced for others in the "mother country". They grew up divorced from their origins and could look forward to being put down forever as "not quite the real thing" if they tried to assimilate to metropolitan society. The sweep of literature written by V.S. Naipaul, his brother Shiva, and a host of other writers from the West Indies, Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America testifies to the truth of this. But wait, can we not find anything joyful in life? Is there no hope whatsoever, despite what hand Fate deals us? What about a sense of humor? In this tale of a colonial boyhood in an island country very like the author's native Trinidad, the strongest note is always distress and failure. A boy attends school, gets good marks and is able to go to England on scholarship. There he crumbles into permanent unease, drifts helplessly, has hopeless affairs, and marries an English woman who also reeks of dissatisfaction. He takes no joy or pleasure in anything, wallowing in disappointment and a feeling of unreality (which is no doubt part of being a "mimic man"). All his relationships are fraught with either pretension or despair. He cannot accept himself or others, fears warmth and friendship, and constantly looks for the plastic trash on the beach of life. Returning to his island, Ralph Singh becomes a real estate magnate, goes into politics, wins a national election, becomes a political force, and then is pushed out, exiled at last to England. There is no spoiler alert here. This is very, very far from a thriller or a novel with an exciting plot. It is a psychological tour de force, both in terms of the main character and of the author. There is a great riff on the feelings of a politician, the "movement" and the crowd. The basis of politics in former colonial societies is writ large. Many of Naipaul's observations capture the behavior of charlatan politicians everywhere. But the mental intricacies of such people form the main thrust of this novel along with their inevitable trajectories. Death is coming, people are continually false, everyone is acting all the time, life is spectral and futile. Hey! If you are looking for a glum, joyless look at human nature, this is definitely your book.
But I've given it five stars because despite his gloom, Naipaul is a top writer.
Perhaps colonial rule in much of the world did produce mimic men. They were those who modeled themselves or at least were modeled on patterns produced for others in the "mother country". They grew up divorced from their origins and could look forward to being put down forever as "not quite the real thing" if they tried to assimilate to metropolitan society. The sweep of literature written by V.S. Naipaul, his brother Shiva, and a host of other writers from the West Indies, Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America testifies to the truth of this. But wait, can we not find anything joyful in life? Is there no hope whatsoever, despite what hand Fate deals us? What about a sense of humor? In this tale of a colonial boyhood in an island country very like the author's native Trinidad, the strongest note is always distress and failure. A boy attends school, gets good marks and is able to go to England on scholarship. There he crumbles into permanent unease, drifts helplessly, has hopeless affairs, and marries an English woman who also reeks of dissatisfaction. He takes no joy or pleasure in anything, wallowing in disappointment and a feeling of unreality (which is no doubt part of being a "mimic man"). All his relationships are fraught with either pretension or despair. He cannot accept himself or others, fears warmth and friendship, and constantly looks for the plastic trash on the beach of life. Returning to his island, Ralph Singh becomes a real estate magnate, goes into politics, wins a national election, becomes a political force, and then is pushed out, exiled at last to England. There is no spoiler alert here. This is very, very far from a thriller or a novel with an exciting plot. It is a psychological tour de force, both in terms of the main character and of the author. There is a great riff on the feelings of a politician, the "movement" and the crowd. The basis of politics in former colonial societies is writ large. Many of Naipaul's observations capture the behavior of charlatan politicians everywhere. But the mental intricacies of such people form the main thrust of this novel along with their inevitable trajectories. Death is coming, people are continually false, everyone is acting all the time, life is spectral and futile. Hey! If you are looking for a glum, joyless look at human nature, this is definitely your book.
But I've given it five stars because despite his gloom, Naipaul is a top writer.
October 11, 2022
I know that return to my island and to my political life is impossible. The pace of colonial events is quick, the turnover of leaders rapid. I have already been forgotten; and I know that the people who supplanted me are themselves about to be supplanted. My career is by no means unusual. It falls into the pattern. The career of the colonial politician is short and ends brutally. We lack order. Above all, we lack power, and we do not understand that we lack power. We mistake words and the acclamation of words for power; as soon as our bluff is called we are lost. Politics for us are a do-or-die, once-for-all charge. Once we are committed we fight more than political battles; we often fight quite literally for our lives. Our transitional or makeshift societies do not cushion us. There are no universities or City houses to refresh us and absorb us after the heat of battle. For those who lose, and nearly everyone in the end loses, there is only one course: flight. Flight to the greater disorder, the final emptiness: London and the home counties.
The bitter life of Ralph Singh, a politician in a Caribbean island. His childhood. His loves. His political career and his final years in a sort of exile. Naipaul writes about people who have been fucked over by colonialism. But instead of taking grievance with the oppressor, Naipaul focuses on the impotence and cruelty of the oppressed.
It is very painful to read Naipaul's books because he writes about a type of colonial who is always in flight and can never find peace or belong with his own people:
I feared drama. My dream of the cocoa estate was not the dream of eviction; and it was more than a dream of order. It was a yearning, from the peak of power, for withdrawal; it was a wistful desire to undo. Scarcely the politician’s drive. But then I never was a politician. I never had the frenzy, the sense of mission, the necessary hurt.
I struggled to keep drama alive, for its replacement was despair: the vision of a boy walking on an endless desolate beach, between vegetation living, rotting, collapsed, and a mindless, living sea. No calm then: that came later, fleetingly. Drama failing, I knew frenzy. Frenzy kept me silent. And silence committed me to pretence.
I believe there is a bit of Ralph Singh in most colonials to this very day. While former colonies like India have now gained some power in the world, I still cannot help but feel that we are minor players in the great game, with much of our importance drummed up by the cacophonic local medias.
The bitter life of Ralph Singh, a politician in a Caribbean island. His childhood. His loves. His political career and his final years in a sort of exile. Naipaul writes about people who have been fucked over by colonialism. But instead of taking grievance with the oppressor, Naipaul focuses on the impotence and cruelty of the oppressed.
It is very painful to read Naipaul's books because he writes about a type of colonial who is always in flight and can never find peace or belong with his own people:
I feared drama. My dream of the cocoa estate was not the dream of eviction; and it was more than a dream of order. It was a yearning, from the peak of power, for withdrawal; it was a wistful desire to undo. Scarcely the politician’s drive. But then I never was a politician. I never had the frenzy, the sense of mission, the necessary hurt.
I struggled to keep drama alive, for its replacement was despair: the vision of a boy walking on an endless desolate beach, between vegetation living, rotting, collapsed, and a mindless, living sea. No calm then: that came later, fleetingly. Drama failing, I knew frenzy. Frenzy kept me silent. And silence committed me to pretence.
I believe there is a bit of Ralph Singh in most colonials to this very day. While former colonies like India have now gained some power in the world, I still cannot help but feel that we are minor players in the great game, with much of our importance drummed up by the cacophonic local medias.
September 19, 2021
The story of a man growing up on a Caribbean island called Isabella. It is divided into three parts. First his trip to England and life there. He lives in a rundown hotel and meets eventually Sandra. They marry and return to Isabella. His mother is upset he has married a white woman. Ralph Singh the name he gives himself then becomes a successful property developer. He is in a group of people not really friends who envy his success. He becomes estranged from his wife who is uneducated and common.
The second part deals with his childhood and relationships with family and friends. His father leaves him and sets up a cult with political aspirations. This fails. Then his father becomes a leader of a small Hindu sect. Ralph’s family is well off and he associates with his mothers side of the family who are wealthy from having the Coca Cola franchise for the island. He is nearly murdered by his cousin Cecil a spoilt child who grows up to lose everything. He also begins to be involved in politics. The first part also includes his past relationship with his wife Sandra. The life they have of building a Roman house, friends they do not like and Ralph’s alienation of who he is.
The third part of the novel is his rise and fall as a politician and return to England to write his memoirs in a London Hotel. The story captures the struggle of newly independent colonies and the naivety of politicians, corruption, greed and the making of promises to the populace that can and have never been achieved. Ralph does not have the stomach for the shenanigans and instead gives up and finds a form of peace in writing his story.
Naipaul has a great way with words if at time heavy the story is one we are familiar with and still happens today.
The second part deals with his childhood and relationships with family and friends. His father leaves him and sets up a cult with political aspirations. This fails. Then his father becomes a leader of a small Hindu sect. Ralph’s family is well off and he associates with his mothers side of the family who are wealthy from having the Coca Cola franchise for the island. He is nearly murdered by his cousin Cecil a spoilt child who grows up to lose everything. He also begins to be involved in politics. The first part also includes his past relationship with his wife Sandra. The life they have of building a Roman house, friends they do not like and Ralph’s alienation of who he is.
The third part of the novel is his rise and fall as a politician and return to England to write his memoirs in a London Hotel. The story captures the struggle of newly independent colonies and the naivety of politicians, corruption, greed and the making of promises to the populace that can and have never been achieved. Ralph does not have the stomach for the shenanigans and instead gives up and finds a form of peace in writing his story.
Naipaul has a great way with words if at time heavy the story is one we are familiar with and still happens today.
September 20, 2021
3,5'tan 4..
May 16, 2020
It turns out that it is possible for a book devoid of plot to be redeemed by the sheer force of its prose. Like most of V.S. Naipaul's books this one is essentially an exploration of some part of his own identity. The main character is a colonial politician and this is essentially his life story, growing up "shipwrecked" on a fictional version of Naipaul's own Trinidad. Ralph Singh is a mimic man like all those of the colonial elite – learning about another distant world through books and television and attempting to apply those lessons to his own very different society. There is a saying attributed to the Greeks that the first prerequisite for a person to be happy is being born in a famous city. Naipaul seemed to believe this, so one can imagine his angst at being born in a place he never ceased to deride as a backwater.
There are the familiar themes of Naipaul's works in this one: humor, contempt, futility, yearning. He described the world as he saw it without stepping on eggshells. That's what makes reading him so refreshing, regardless if he was wrong or unfair at times. Naipaul was an incredible writer, a genius. He could make a describe drinking a cup of cocoa or slicing cheese in a manner that is somehow absolutely captivating and unforgettable. He used humor effectively and described the very ordinary – food, manners, his own surroundings while writing – carefully and with great beauty. His political commentary, for whatever it's worth, is simply a bonus. Not much really happens in this book, not in a clear way at least. Yet somehow it was gripping. You can actually observe him in his earliest books working up to his masterpiece, A House for Mister Biswas. I never thought I was someone who could enjoy reading just for prose but I've been proven wrong.
There are the familiar themes of Naipaul's works in this one: humor, contempt, futility, yearning. He described the world as he saw it without stepping on eggshells. That's what makes reading him so refreshing, regardless if he was wrong or unfair at times. Naipaul was an incredible writer, a genius. He could make a describe drinking a cup of cocoa or slicing cheese in a manner that is somehow absolutely captivating and unforgettable. He used humor effectively and described the very ordinary – food, manners, his own surroundings while writing – carefully and with great beauty. His political commentary, for whatever it's worth, is simply a bonus. Not much really happens in this book, not in a clear way at least. Yet somehow it was gripping. You can actually observe him in his earliest books working up to his masterpiece, A House for Mister Biswas. I never thought I was someone who could enjoy reading just for prose but I've been proven wrong.
October 15, 2015
This book is utterly lacking in plot, interesting characters, or anything useful to say about the human condition. What makes it all the more frustrating is that this should be interesting; it's about a businessman turned socialist politician in a newly free Island nation. But instead of getting gripping highlights from his rise and fall from power, Naipaul chooses instead to make his narrator detached and cynical, for "literary effect" or something (it is as if he is actively sabotaging his own book). Over half the book is uninteresting biographical details and random musings, with all the action taking place in passing. I'm not usually a purist when it comes to "show, don't tell," but my goodness was this boring.
December 26, 2019
Impeccable style. Interesting story. The last part contained a bit too much repetition to my taste.
February 4, 2010
"Sentence for sentence, he is a model of literary tact and precision…" – for me that is why one should read this book. There is not a line that does not feel considered. This is precisely what Naipaul intended to say. It might not be what a lot of people want to hear but I would respectfully suggest that it is far from irrelevant. A lot of dull (and, indeed, unsympathetic) characters have had a lot to say, Camus' Meursault, in his prison cell (The Outsider), and Saul Bellow's Joseph, in his cheap New York boarding house (Dangling Man), jump to mind but no doubt there are others.
You can read a full review on my blog here.
You can read a full review on my blog here.
Read
November 20, 2014I'm a commoner trying so hard to finish this book. Is it too early to call VS Naipaul overrated? Does this make me ignorant? Don't get me wrong, I understand the post-colonial social issues highlighted and the theme of displacement and Singh's search for identity etcetera but it just isn't as interesting as I was hoping it would be. I'm forcing myself to enjoy this book and its feeling like a task in itself.
To avoid any biasses I must acknowledge his literary brilliance and his extraordinary use of words. No lie, I chuckled a bit here and there. Unfortunately this book just isn't my cup of tea. I shall finish it simply because I have made it my goal to read at least 5 books written by Caribbean authors and this would make 4 out of 5.
To avoid any biasses I must acknowledge his literary brilliance and his extraordinary use of words. No lie, I chuckled a bit here and there. Unfortunately this book just isn't my cup of tea. I shall finish it simply because I have made it my goal to read at least 5 books written by Caribbean authors and this would make 4 out of 5.
April 21, 2008
I think perhaps the style of the prose is a large factor towards my disliking this novel - it just wasn't for me.
However, I think the main reason I didn't like it was the protagonist, Ralph Singh. I just couldn't connect to the man, no matter how hard I tried.
Mostly, it felt like this was a novel that was floating by me, but that I could not grasp on to.
However, I think the main reason I didn't like it was the protagonist, Ralph Singh. I just couldn't connect to the man, no matter how hard I tried.
Mostly, it felt like this was a novel that was floating by me, but that I could not grasp on to.
March 31, 2017
This book makes you feel small, insignificant, and makes you question the meaning of the almost absurd lives that we all lead in a world transformed by colonialism. As an Asian American, I experienced a mixture of emotions and reactions that are hard to describe. Oh, and reading this book makes you feel so, so alone in this world for some reason...
March 26, 2023
"Certain emotions bridge the years and link unlikely places. Sometimes by this linking the sense of place is destroyed, and we are ourselves alone: the young man, the boy, the child. The physical world, which we have yet continue to prove, is then like a private fabrication we have always known."
I love Naipaul's writing style.
I love Naipaul's writing style.
October 17, 2022
An interesting, engaging, well written novel in the first person about Ralph Singh, a man of Indian origin, growing up on the fictional island British colonial country of Isabella in the Caribbean. His birth name is Ranjit Kripalsingh. At an early age in school, he called himself Ralph Singh. Ralph emigrates to England and marries a white English woman named Sandra. He writes about his experiences living with other poor immigrants in Kensington, London. Later he returns to Isabella with his wife, Sandra. Back in Isabella Ralph becomes a property developer and politician who tries to represent his people against British colonial rule.
I found this novel to be a very satisfying reading experience. Whilst not quite as good as his novels, ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, ‘A Bend in the River’, ‘Miguel Street’, and ‘In a Free State’, ‘The Mimic Men’ is a very well written novel.
V. S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
This book was first published in 1967.
I found this novel to be a very satisfying reading experience. Whilst not quite as good as his novels, ‘A House for Mr Biswas’, ‘A Bend in the River’, ‘Miguel Street’, and ‘In a Free State’, ‘The Mimic Men’ is a very well written novel.
V. S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
This book was first published in 1967.
May 11, 2022
Desperation at empire's end
June 12, 2014
For fans of Naipaul The Mimic Men will cover familiar territory; isolation, identity, apathy. For newcomers to Naipaul I suggest you start somewhere else. Guerrillas or A Bend in the River would probably be the best starting point. In The Mimic Men we are treated to the first person account of the life of Ralph Singe, former government minister of the small island nation of Isabella, now living in exile. The story is split into three non-linear sections: the first detailing Ralph's college years in London, and his return to Isabella with his English wife; the second dealing with his youth as a privileged, yet minority "Asiatic" on Isabella; the third covering his rise to power in the newly independent nation. As with much of Naipaul's work The Mimic Men is concerned largely with the theme of identity; the grander theme of post-colonial national identity, as well as the smaller, though no less important, theme of personal identity. Ralph (like Naipaul himself) is a man without a homeland. Though I thought this theme was better portrayed in Guerrillas and A Bend in the River, The mimic Men is still a brilliant novel written in Naipaul's trademark brutal and precise prose.
May 11, 2021
I have been resistant to reading Naipaul because well...ahem ahem. Can't say Naipaul was redeemed for me in this book. Too indulgent. And who describes a woman's legs as something that "quivered like risen dough" No thanks.
May 23, 2014
The Mimic Men by V. S. Naipaul
This is not a spoiler alert per se, since I will not disclose any plot or ending. However, I will not write so much about the book as what it made me feel, think and…write. You are welcome to read my “re-view”, but if you want to know more about the plot, the style…I am afraid this may be of little help
V.S. Naipaul has the magic touch. Writing about (my impression) of The Mimic Men, I think of A Bend in the River and A House for Mr. Biswas. To make amends for my lack of understanding of The Mimic Men, I can say that I am determined to read again…not The Mimics, but one or both of the mentioned masterpieces.
When you read the great work of a fabulous writer, you are bound to raise the stakes and expectations for the next book by the same acclaimed author. If there are two masterpieces, it gets next to impossible to find the same satisfaction in immersing in the third.
That may be what happened here: I did not get hooked by The Mimic Men.
It is a rare phenomenon for me: I can think of three, four authors, from the top of my head that have written more than four or five novels that I loved. They are – Marcel Proust, Somerset Maugham, Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann. And the books I am referring to are:
In Search of Lost Time – which could be looked at as a whole long novel, or the best story ever told in 6 novels
Somerset Maugham has fascinated me with Of Human Bondage (rated among the best novels of the 20th century) The Painted Veil, Short Stories (practically all of them), Cakes and Ale and The Moon and Six Pence
Herman Hesse is a Nobel Prize Winner and the well known author of Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund (which overwhelmed me and I am in the process of reading again) and The wonderful The Glass Bead Game
Thomas Mann again a Nobel Prize Winner and marvelous writer- I loved first of all The Magic Mountain (included among the best books ever written, together with some other of Thomas Mann’s works), Death in Venice, The Buddenbrooks and Joseph and His Brothers.
Thomas Mann has a short story, apart from the novels mentioned, which had a tremendous impact on me. I am afraid I do not know the name of the tale and it may be rather irrelevant, for it is one message in it which “pierced my heart” not the whole story, since I do not recollect much of the rest…
One character in the short story says something like this:
“I look around and I am amazed- I hear people complaining all the time:
“- I love you so much, I have no words to express it
Another one says
-Our friendship means so much, words are too small”
….
The character says:
- Words like love and friendship mean so much that we do not find them in real life
- Only in books you find love and friends
- Love is a feeling, in its definition, that goes way beyond what people around feel
The same with friendship
A friend will stay with us, help us foe ever…
But not in real life
If we look at the multitude of facebook friendships which mean next to nothing, he is right and accurate for our times.
I wrote more about a Thomas Mann than about The Mimic Men…but I did warn you, didn’t I??
Included here would be one of those smileys, but I have read that Martin Seligman feels they are useless and I agree, they are so much used and abused that they have ceased to mean anything…like so many of those big words: patriotism, I care for you….
This is not a spoiler alert per se, since I will not disclose any plot or ending. However, I will not write so much about the book as what it made me feel, think and…write. You are welcome to read my “re-view”, but if you want to know more about the plot, the style…I am afraid this may be of little help
V.S. Naipaul has the magic touch. Writing about (my impression) of The Mimic Men, I think of A Bend in the River and A House for Mr. Biswas. To make amends for my lack of understanding of The Mimic Men, I can say that I am determined to read again…not The Mimics, but one or both of the mentioned masterpieces.
When you read the great work of a fabulous writer, you are bound to raise the stakes and expectations for the next book by the same acclaimed author. If there are two masterpieces, it gets next to impossible to find the same satisfaction in immersing in the third.
That may be what happened here: I did not get hooked by The Mimic Men.
It is a rare phenomenon for me: I can think of three, four authors, from the top of my head that have written more than four or five novels that I loved. They are – Marcel Proust, Somerset Maugham, Herman Hesse and Thomas Mann. And the books I am referring to are:
In Search of Lost Time – which could be looked at as a whole long novel, or the best story ever told in 6 novels
Somerset Maugham has fascinated me with Of Human Bondage (rated among the best novels of the 20th century) The Painted Veil, Short Stories (practically all of them), Cakes and Ale and The Moon and Six Pence
Herman Hesse is a Nobel Prize Winner and the well known author of Siddhartha, Narcissus and Goldmund (which overwhelmed me and I am in the process of reading again) and The wonderful The Glass Bead Game
Thomas Mann again a Nobel Prize Winner and marvelous writer- I loved first of all The Magic Mountain (included among the best books ever written, together with some other of Thomas Mann’s works), Death in Venice, The Buddenbrooks and Joseph and His Brothers.
Thomas Mann has a short story, apart from the novels mentioned, which had a tremendous impact on me. I am afraid I do not know the name of the tale and it may be rather irrelevant, for it is one message in it which “pierced my heart” not the whole story, since I do not recollect much of the rest…
One character in the short story says something like this:
“I look around and I am amazed- I hear people complaining all the time:
“- I love you so much, I have no words to express it
Another one says
-Our friendship means so much, words are too small”
….
The character says:
- Words like love and friendship mean so much that we do not find them in real life
- Only in books you find love and friends
- Love is a feeling, in its definition, that goes way beyond what people around feel
The same with friendship
A friend will stay with us, help us foe ever…
But not in real life
If we look at the multitude of facebook friendships which mean next to nothing, he is right and accurate for our times.
I wrote more about a Thomas Mann than about The Mimic Men…but I did warn you, didn’t I??
Included here would be one of those smileys, but I have read that Martin Seligman feels they are useless and I agree, they are so much used and abused that they have ceased to mean anything…like so many of those big words: patriotism, I care for you….
April 29, 2021
The lesson to be learned from V.S. Naipaul's The Mimic Men is that the place from which you come can be a limiting factor in your life. Even if that place is Trinidad (called Isabella in the novel), a not entirely successful multiracial society. I know this is true, because I am from Cleveland, Ohio -- known for Maynard G. Krebs's The Monster That Devoured Cleveland and such mottoes as "The Mistake on the Lake" and "The Worst Location in the Nation."
This book is a strange admixture of fiction and autobiography. As I read it, I definitely felt that I was following Naipaul's own story, as he goes to England, feeling not as an Englishman, yet no longer really feeling he was a Trinidadian. In a way, Naipaul seems to be saying, all former colonials from the Caribbean are, as it were, mimic men, not truly belonging anywhere.
I read this book after reading Paul Theroux's excellent Sir Vidia's Shadow, which brought me closer to both Naipaul and Theroux, even though their own friendship was dissolved after Naipaul's remarriage. It made me want to read more of Theroux and of Naipaul, both of whom I have liked and respected these many years.
This book is a strange admixture of fiction and autobiography. As I read it, I definitely felt that I was following Naipaul's own story, as he goes to England, feeling not as an Englishman, yet no longer really feeling he was a Trinidadian. In a way, Naipaul seems to be saying, all former colonials from the Caribbean are, as it were, mimic men, not truly belonging anywhere.
I read this book after reading Paul Theroux's excellent Sir Vidia's Shadow, which brought me closer to both Naipaul and Theroux, even though their own friendship was dissolved after Naipaul's remarriage. It made me want to read more of Theroux and of Naipaul, both of whom I have liked and respected these many years.
March 20, 2015
When I first got this book, I turned to a random page and read a paragraph. To my delight, I chanced on some sentimental, musing passage about the misery of being alone, that was melancholic yet moving, and my expectations for the book rose. Unfortunately, the sample I encountered proved to be very representative, and I quickly tired of the narrator's pathetic and mopey writing style. The benefit? Some parts are so sad they are funny. The novel does explore some deeper worthwhile topics about immigration and patriation, and offers pretty regular comments about breasts (the narrator is obsessed with describing every breast he encounters, particularly his girfriend's, whose nipples are painted with lipstick), but besides that it's drudgery to read.
January 28, 2016
Dense. Dense. Dense and dense some more. The book is like molasses- slow and beyond boring. I could not connect with any of the characters, I felt the descriptions and story was overwritten and overdone. It was just too much, as if Naipaul was trying hard. Now I have a very big aversion to this book. Overwritten and Dense.
June 3, 2011
good work but sounds very stereotype, a young second generation immigrant Indian in the Caribbeans being toyed by the world powers..
January 19, 2023
A mid-point novel for Naipaul, somewhere between the humourous books of the 1950s and 1960s to the heavier postcolonial works of the 1970s; and between Trinidad-UK axis works (including UK-focused Mr Stone and the Knight's Companion: 1963) and alternative post-empire settings that followed (Africa, India etc...).
I lost patience with this one, which while elegantly written, outstayed its welcome with a meandering and choppy character study of a man ousted from power. The final few pages rein in the focus on the political downfall, like an alternative sequel to Mr Stone, but it's too little, too late. The impatience was mine, but made me wonder too whether Naipaul had struggled to frame this book over the years he spent on it. The (admittedly shorter) mid-1960s hiatus in Naipaul's writing mirrors a contemporaneous gap in William Golding's writing, where writer's block was certainly blamed
So far I have tended to prefer Naipaul at his briefest, where the tiny size of the book is inverse proportion to its weight. 'The Mimic Men' was too many words, diluting the substance like so much literary homeopathy.
I lost patience with this one, which while elegantly written, outstayed its welcome with a meandering and choppy character study of a man ousted from power. The final few pages rein in the focus on the political downfall, like an alternative sequel to Mr Stone, but it's too little, too late. The impatience was mine, but made me wonder too whether Naipaul had struggled to frame this book over the years he spent on it. The (admittedly shorter) mid-1960s hiatus in Naipaul's writing mirrors a contemporaneous gap in William Golding's writing, where writer's block was certainly blamed
So far I have tended to prefer Naipaul at his briefest, where the tiny size of the book is inverse proportion to its weight. 'The Mimic Men' was too many words, diluting the substance like so much literary homeopathy.
May 25, 2015
The Mimic Men is the fictional autobiography of Ralph Singh, although I suspect there is a lot of personal narrative from Naipaul's own life within. Ralph is a perpetual outsider - never completely comfortable with his own place in society - and understandably so. He is of Indian descent but born on the forgotten outskirts of colonial Britain. He leaves his home of Isabella, a fictional Caribbean isle likely modeled on Trinidad where Naipaul was himself raised, and goes to study in Britain. He returns shortly after he finishes University and a series of events bring him both great success and abject failure on the island. He returns to London once more, and it's from that vantage point that he writes this narrative.
But the plot doesn't really matter, it's not that kind of book. It's a perfectly cohesive storyline, sure, but given the lack of central plot or conflict, it is probably better described as a series of episodes that paint a life and world in broad strokes. Naipaul writes brilliantly and has complete mastery over a sentence. His ability to create three-dimensional, ambiguous characters is impressive, and this combined with the lack of "plot" really mimics real life to an extent where it's hard to believe it's fiction. This approach could spell disaster for a lesser writer, but at almost no point did I find myself bored, except perhaps in the political section where Naipaul drifts away from the personal narrative and takes a more vague, conceptual style.
But realism itself doesn't make for a memorable read. What really stands out is the author's rare ability to express truths, however ugly they may be, about the world and ourselves. Which isn't to say that this is a depressing novel, although it certainly doesn't sing with any kind of joie de vivre. It's one of those rare books that speaks truths regarding the human condition that you've vaguely felt but couldn't really place, and articulates them with such clarity that it feels like an itch has finally been scratched.
This is the first of Naipaul that I've read, and from what I understand, it's not considered his best novel. In which case, I have a lot to look forward to as I explore his catalog further.
But the plot doesn't really matter, it's not that kind of book. It's a perfectly cohesive storyline, sure, but given the lack of central plot or conflict, it is probably better described as a series of episodes that paint a life and world in broad strokes. Naipaul writes brilliantly and has complete mastery over a sentence. His ability to create three-dimensional, ambiguous characters is impressive, and this combined with the lack of "plot" really mimics real life to an extent where it's hard to believe it's fiction. This approach could spell disaster for a lesser writer, but at almost no point did I find myself bored, except perhaps in the political section where Naipaul drifts away from the personal narrative and takes a more vague, conceptual style.
But realism itself doesn't make for a memorable read. What really stands out is the author's rare ability to express truths, however ugly they may be, about the world and ourselves. Which isn't to say that this is a depressing novel, although it certainly doesn't sing with any kind of joie de vivre. It's one of those rare books that speaks truths regarding the human condition that you've vaguely felt but couldn't really place, and articulates them with such clarity that it feels like an itch has finally been scratched.
This is the first of Naipaul that I've read, and from what I understand, it's not considered his best novel. In which case, I have a lot to look forward to as I explore his catalog further.
March 10, 2019
This Book Represents the identity crisis of the protagonist Ranjit Kripal Singh, who spends his childhood in a British colony, then goes to college in London. He then returns to to his Island home torn up by decolonization, only to be exiled and ending up back in London. At 40 years old he writes his reflection on how his life turned out as it did.
Indeed the book throws light on the post-colonial realities that have shaped the Contemporary societies, and provides important insights relating to hybridity ambivalence transculturation uncentricity exile and so on.
The novel can also be seen as a mirror of Naipaul's career. Just like the rest of his novels one should focus on Naipaul himself to understand the historical and theoretical issues his books has generated.
The protagonist's relationship with space ( London in one hand and Isabella in the other hand) highlights his understanding of culture identity belonging and his longing for "certainties". thus it highlights his crisis as a lost citizen "white but not quite".
In this book, Naipaul, I think, is implicitly criticizing the colonizers for the rootlessness of the ex-colonized individuals. Indeed Singh, unlike many other ex-colonized, is not handicapped by poverty ignorance or a lack of natural Talent. Thus he is exposed, thanks to his education to a more sophisticated London Society. In spite of all of that he is not less vulnerable to the identity crisis.
To quickly conclude our mimic man is lost between his artificial home and the Imperial Center, two completely different conflicting locations, among which Rangit or Ralph has lost his belonging to one definite clear home.
To be honest the book is good. But did I enjoy it? No is the answer simply because I'm not reading it I'm studying it for the literature exam.
Indeed the book throws light on the post-colonial realities that have shaped the Contemporary societies, and provides important insights relating to hybridity ambivalence transculturation uncentricity exile and so on.
The novel can also be seen as a mirror of Naipaul's career. Just like the rest of his novels one should focus on Naipaul himself to understand the historical and theoretical issues his books has generated.
The protagonist's relationship with space ( London in one hand and Isabella in the other hand) highlights his understanding of culture identity belonging and his longing for "certainties". thus it highlights his crisis as a lost citizen "white but not quite".
In this book, Naipaul, I think, is implicitly criticizing the colonizers for the rootlessness of the ex-colonized individuals. Indeed Singh, unlike many other ex-colonized, is not handicapped by poverty ignorance or a lack of natural Talent. Thus he is exposed, thanks to his education to a more sophisticated London Society. In spite of all of that he is not less vulnerable to the identity crisis.
To quickly conclude our mimic man is lost between his artificial home and the Imperial Center, two completely different conflicting locations, among which Rangit or Ralph has lost his belonging to one definite clear home.
To be honest the book is good. But did I enjoy it? No is the answer simply because I'm not reading it I'm studying it for the literature exam.
December 13, 2020
Yazar etrafında oluşan muhalif tavra aldırmadan okumanızı öneririm. Roman tümüyle sömürge toplumlarının melezleşmeyle oluşan köksüzlük, yerinden edilmişlik, aidiyetsizlik kavramları üzerine kurulu. Bu kavramlara hem sömürge hem de sömürgeci açısından bakarak bir karşıtlık, çift görüşlülük oluşturuyor. Sanırım çevirinin de etkisiyle rahat okunuyor.
August 16, 2008
I think this is one of the first books I've ever read (at least that I'm consciously aware of) that won a Pulitzer Prize. I can see why it won it. I can also see why popular fiction will never win the Pulitzer.
The novel tells the story of a Caribbean politician and his life "in parenthesis" on his home island and in London. The narrative voice doesn't shift from place to place, which focuses the cohesiveness of the personality that moves between the two spaces. The narrator's depiction of his own life is strangely muted at times, as if he really doesn't ever care what happens to him. He never seems to get angry for instance, even at things he should be angry about, and when people around him express other strong emotions like anger or jealousy, he is terribly uncomfortable with it.
The narrator is fascinated with the quality of light in both places, but most particularly in London, something shared with some other postcolonial writers, and his depictions of landscapes frequently employ light as a descriptor of the mood that each place evokes. It's a very interesting engagement with the physical, yet non-tangible element (light) of landscape.
This is certainly one of those books that sticks with you after you've read it and worthy of a reread at some future point.
The novel tells the story of a Caribbean politician and his life "in parenthesis" on his home island and in London. The narrative voice doesn't shift from place to place, which focuses the cohesiveness of the personality that moves between the two spaces. The narrator's depiction of his own life is strangely muted at times, as if he really doesn't ever care what happens to him. He never seems to get angry for instance, even at things he should be angry about, and when people around him express other strong emotions like anger or jealousy, he is terribly uncomfortable with it.
The narrator is fascinated with the quality of light in both places, but most particularly in London, something shared with some other postcolonial writers, and his depictions of landscapes frequently employ light as a descriptor of the mood that each place evokes. It's a very interesting engagement with the physical, yet non-tangible element (light) of landscape.
This is certainly one of those books that sticks with you after you've read it and worthy of a reread at some future point.
August 15, 2017
Master of language. But plot? Meh. I gather this was somewhat autobiographical but I just could not sympathize with the protagonist and did not care what happened to him. The story moved too slowly and went...nowhere interesting. What I did appreciate was the dissonance, the not belonging, the awareness of performance in day to day life... and of course, the beautiful language!
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