Naipaul was such a visionary.

>>24489608 (OP)
>Indians defecate everywhere.
>his eye for grotesque detail (about whose validity there can be little argument)
lol

>>24489608 (OP)
Has he ever considered that the pollution rituals are actually tied to shitting outside. You don't shit where you live, let alone where you pray

>>24489651
Isn't it like a communal ritual, though? Like meeting at the agora. It contributes to building a high-trust community.

Perhaps not a visionary, but he did write very well. I've only read two of his books, 'Guerillas' and 'In A Free State', but they are quite thought provoking, especially on the immigrant experience and the relationship between whites and natives. In his time he was seen by most of his kind as a sellout, and therefore he isn't ever praised without the usual caveats. Plus he treated the people around him like shit, especially his white wife.

Just got into Naipaul over the last year. Feels weird to say a Nobel winner is underrated or overlooked, but you’d think he’d be more popular in the current literary climate.
An Area of Darkness is a superb book. Has proper structure and thematic and character development, almost a novel rather than a travelogue.
The other two in the India trilogy are good, but not quite at the level of that. A Wounded Civilisation feels like some magazine pieces stitched together rather than a book proper, A Million Mutinies is too long and unfocused.
Among the Believers, especially the Iran sections is excellent.
Naipaul has the advantage that he can be brutally honest in a way a white writer wouldn’t dare, and he can get closer to eg Iranians than a white American possibly could.
Only fiction I’ve read is House for Mr Biswas which is comfy af.

>>24489608 (OP)
Only read Miguel Street from him but remember it surprisingly well.
I'm surprised I don't hear much about Trinidad compared to other WI places like Jamaica or Grenada. I notice a lot of famous people are from there but no one even knows the place exists.

I like his nonfiction best, especially the novella-length pieces like 'Michael X and the Killings in Trinidad' and 'The Crocodiles of Yammasoukro.'

>>24490421
Naipaul's been problematic with the postcolonial crowd for decades because he doesn't blame all 3rd world problems on white people. Though I've noticed he does seem to hate white liberals.

>>24489608 (OP)
I never got into Naipaul despite being from his country. Maybe im biased but a great trinidadian author is Samuel Selvon, he really captures how trinis act really well, and he writes the accent real good. You should read Lonely Londoners, it's a short humorous book about Caribbean immigrants in London, written in the 50's.
Though if you're unfamiliar with accent it might be grating to read.

>>24491249
>Though I've noticed he does seem to hate white liberals.
Definitely. Also non-white authors that critically examine aspects of their communities are often shunned, despite their brilliance. Ralph Ellison critiqued black involvement in Communist movements in Invisible Man and was criticized for this by his peers, and his work was deemed insufficiently revolutionary.

>>24491249

They don't have to blame everything on white people but from the excerpt OP posted alone one can see that he is not coming from the position of aforementioned post colonial crowd.

For example, his sheer seethe at watching those children do their tricks is something I as an Indian truly understand. But we must also understand that it is not entirely upto us to salvage our image, especially in the face of such vast gap in privelage. Some onus lies on the American tourists as well to not make sweeping generalisations based on these experiences, of the kind that would give Naipaul sleepless nights. But normies simply don't work that way. The words "socioeconomic factors" are like a bug repellent to some.

>>24489608 (OP)
>The observer of Indian horrors must somehow earn the right to comment on them