An Apology for Sir Vidia as a Traveller and Writer

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the elements of ambivalence that mark the Naipaul persona, both as a man and a writer. V.S. Naipaul has been the centre of numerous controversies for quite some time and critics are divided in their opinions about this Nobel Prize winning writer. Although revered for his fictional masterpieces especially written during the early part of his career, he became more famous because of his later non-fictional works, especially the travel narratives. It suggests that Naipaul had already become a ‘traveller’ in the metaphoric sense when he started to travel across the colonial spaces that constitute the routes of his colonial displacement. His narratives on these travels are the sights where the problematic of identity or identification of the writer/narrator is mostly noticeable in the subject positions available and adopted. V.S. Naipaul, often known for his rather daring observations, also appears not as an unified self but as unstable and shifting one, giving the impression of more than one self at the same moment, claiming, and jostling for attention.