ABSTRACT
Perhaps it is Naipaul's mixed heritage that allows his unique perspective. Born in Trinidad of Indian parents and having spent
most of his adult life in London, Naipaul's voice is consistently that of the outsider. His novels portray the psyches of men and women who do not fit in anywhere, whose selves cannot connect with the others around them. Most often this outsider is the exiled colonial trying to find a place in a postcolonial world. In Naipaul's novel The Mimic Men (1967), Ralph Singh, failed Caribbean politician living in London, is acutely aware of his own difference.2 Yet he is unable to forge a self that does not mimic his adopted Anglo-European culture. Naipaul's novels are obsessive on this theme: the colonial has no place of his own, all is chaos for him. Not surprisingly this theme is Naipaul's own personal enigma as well and colors all his travel writing. At the beginning of his second travel book, as he sets off to discover his Indian heritage, he sounds remarkably like the tormented Singh.
