The Theme of Exile in Naipaul’s Fiction

Abstract

In the 20th century no one has gone to Naipaul’s lengths to cultivable such an emphatic link between the literary theme of exile and his personal literary, nor has anyone so consistently played off that connection in the body of his or her work. Naipaul is generally considered as the most comprehensively uprooted of twentieth century writers and the most bereft of national affiliations. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers of the theme of exile. Naipaul’s moralistic writing can be seen as a process of identity recovery undergoing a series of transformations: he denies or negates his Caribbean homeland, adopts a stage of mimicry in England searches for his cultural roots in India, and finally reconstructs his identity out of his multi-cultural particularity and uniqueness. His writing career comes in four stages: 1) alienation 2) colonial predicament 3) cultural heritage in India and 4) writing for self-definition. By accepting his homelessness and statelessness he recreates a new identity in exile. He makes a voice not only for himself but also for other marginalized people.

V.S. Naipaul is one of the finest writers of the post- colonial era. Chief among the views on him is the recognition that at his finest, in books as varied as A House for Mr. Biswas, The Loss of EI Dorado and The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul commands a unique style. Even Dereck Walcolt, a frequent critic of his ideas, hails him as the finest writer of the English sentence. Nor can one fail to admire Naipaul’s faithfulness to exacting standards of productivity. Many readers would concur that Biswas, a tragicomic novel of epic scope delivered at age twenty nine, remains his most remarkable work. Nothing since has equalled the inventiveness and emotional generosity of that homage to this father’s misfortunes in the straightened circumstances of colonial Trinidad.