Miguel Street

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Oct 20, 2010 - Fiction - 224 pages
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.
 

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Contents

BOGART 2 THE THING WITHOUT A NAME
GEORGE AND THE PINK HOUSE
HIS CHOSEN CALLING
MANMAN
B WORDSWORTH
THE COWARD
THE PYROTECHNICIST
TITUS HOYT I
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT
THE BLUE CART
LOVE LOVE LOVE ALONE
THE MECHANICAL GENIUS
CAUTION
UNTIL THE SOLDIERS CAME 16
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About the author (2010)

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 BiswasThe Mimic MenGuerrillasA 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 BelieversBeyond BeliefThe Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of DarknessIndia: 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.

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