Miguel Street - (Vintage International) by V S Naipaul (Paperback)

About the Book

The time is World War II, the setting a derelict street in Trinidad's capital, Port of Spain. In this tender early novel, Naipaul renders the residents' lives (and the legends that arise around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.

Book Synopsis

A tender, funny novel written with the verve of Dickens and the passion of Chekhov, set during World War II in a derelict neighborhood in Trinidad's capital and narrated by an unnamed boy--from the Nobel Prize-winning author.

"One of the few contemporary writers of whom we can speak in terms of greatness." --Newsday

"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents this corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. There's Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build "the thing without a name." There's Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big Foot, the bully with glass tear ducts. There's the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. This tender, funny early novel is a work of mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy and anarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page.

Review Quotes

"One of the few contemporary writers of whom we can speak in terms of greatness." --Newsday

"Miguel Street is the Bowery, the Tenderloin, and the Catfish Row of Trinidad's Port of Spain-its citizens a loony multitude whose knavery often rises from real kinship with pathos and tragedy.... Naipaul is at his best in these swift caricatures of human depravity." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Amusing and poignant.... Excellent reading." --Chicago Tribune

"Naipaul does not tell stories. By some miraculous sleight-of-hand he takes you to Port of Spain and shows you the rich, bawdy, consequential lives of the Trinidadians, as though there were no intervening veil of words.... I rather suspect the mantle of Chekhov has fallen on Mr. Naipaul's shoulders." --Saturday Review

About the Author

V.S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.

His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now.

In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He died in 2018.