Book description
At the centre of this extraordinary historical narrative are two linked
themes: the grinding down of the aborigines during the long rivalries of
the quest for El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold; and, two hundred
years later, the man-made horror of the new slave colony.
Naipaul shows how the alchemic delusion of El Dorado drew the small
island of Trinidad into the vortex of world events, making it the object
of Spanish and English colonial designs and a Mecca for
treasure-seekers, slave-traders, and revolutionaries. And through an
accumulation of casual, awful detail, he takes us as close as we can get
to day-to-day life in the Caribbean slave plantations - at the time
thought to be more brutal than their American equivalents.
In this brilliantly researched book, living characters large and small
are rescued from the records and set in a larger, guiding narrative -
about the New World, empire, African slavery, revolution - which is
never less than gripping.
‘History as literature, meticulously researched and masterfully
written’ New York Times Book Review
‘A formidable achievement. . . . No historian has attempted to weave
together in so subtle a manner the threads of the most complex and
turbulent period of Caribbean history’ Times Literary Supplement
‘Brilliant. . . . Startling’ New Statesman
‘A remarkable book. . . . Intelligent, humane, brilliantly written’
Book World
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a
scholarship in 1950. After four years at University College, Oxford, he
began to write, and since then has followed no other profession. He has
published more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, including
Half a Life, A House for Mr Biswas, A Bend in the River
and most recently The Masque of Africa
, and a collection of letters, Between a Father and Son
. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
