- Hardcover: 304 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Distribution Services; 1st Edition edition (April 1967)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0233958843
- ISBN-13: 978-0233958842
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13.6 x 3.8 cm
- Shipping Weight: 458 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“A Tolstoyan spirit.... The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist.”–John Updike, The New Yorker
“Ambitious and successful.”–The Times (London) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
“Ambitious and successful.”–The Times (London) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Book Description
Just 40, Ralph Singh - a disgraced colonial minister exiled from Isabella, the Caribbean island of his birth - writes his autobiography in a genteel hotel in a run-down London suburb. The author also wrote "The Mystic Masseur", "A House for Mr Biswas" and "The Middle Passage".
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Acute but Distasteful.,
This review is from: The Mimic Men. (Paperback)
This is one of Naipaul's earlier novels and in it he addresses many of the same themes that occupy his latter, and masterful "A Place in the World". These include the transition of a multi-ethnic Caribbean society from colony to independence; the culture-shock of a colonial exposed to higher education in Europe; post-independence power struggles and, ultimately, failure, corruption and slow descent into near chaos arising from lack of any dynamic other than lust for power and wealth. The cultural impoverishment of Asian communities cut off from their cultural roots are poignantly described here, as in much of Naipauls's other work (including the masterful "A House for Mr.Biswas", where the treatment is tragic-comic). As always Naipaul's evocation of place and character is acute, bleak and wholly convincing. This said however, the major criticism may be less one of the book than of this particular reader. There is only so much reality that can be comfortably absorbed in a single novel. The fact that the first-person narrator, unsparing in his confessions of mean-mindedness, lechery, callousness and greed, is so contemptible a human-being makes it very hard for the reader not to feel soiled by the time the whole sordid tale is done. I first read this book fourteen years ago, and retained a very unpleasant memory of it for this reason. On re-reading I found that my earlier perception was sustained. It is a splendid literary achievement - but a very distasteful one.
5.0 out of 5 stars
austerely brilliant,
By
This review is from: Mimic Men (Mass Market Paperback)
This is an extremely melancholy story of a former minister of a small caribbean country, who ruminates in dingy exile on his life. As he stumbles through life, an intelligent and competent man but out of his depth, the characer is so painfully real that I had to distance myself from it at times. One of the great original voices, Naipaul has a genius for serving up exotic characters and helping us to empathise with them. It is illmninating and a good way to understand the Third World, even if Naipal is a bit too pessimistic; his peccadillos, almost whiny, form a large part of his novels.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beginning the Journey,
By
This review is from: Mimic Men (Mass Market Paperback)
This novel confronts the effects of colonialism on national and individual identidy and character. This is a prominent focal point of Sir Naipaul's work. The central character of this work is an isolated and deposed island politician writing his story in the anonymnity of his London refuge: a hotel chosen for its distinctly shabby and monastic qualities. This once flamboyant and able man is now impelled,as perhaps his last significant act, to write his story.This is done without emotion, even one so shallow as self pity. Yet the story is told in a vivid and brutal style with the honesty of one driven by the need to confess a crime.This novel expresses a complex theme through a character so well developed that he tells the story of a society whose identidy is dominated by not having one.
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