ABSTRACT
In September 1960, the writer V. S. Naipaul boarded a Spanish steamer in Southampton to revisit Trinidad, the island of his birth and upbringing. After some eleven years in Britain, he returned the second time from the Old World to his former New World home.1 But this was to be the first literary tour he went on. With three moderately successful novels already published and his notable fourth, A House for Mr Biswas, forthcoming, Naipaul travelled in a professional capacity. As is gratefully acknowledged in The Middle Passage (1962), his ensuing travelogue, he sailed to the West Indies on the invitation of the newly established government of Trinidad and Tobago. In fact, he was called back to write a book. The honourable Prime Minister Dr Eric Williams, ‘himself a historian of repute’, had suggested that he render the impressions of this journey, extended also to four other Caribbean countries, in a travel narrative. Naipaul first hesitated, but eventually accepted the suggestion. How, then, did he respond to this commission?
