Through the Spectacles of a Non-believer: Diasporic Images of the Antilles, Africa and Latin America in V.S. Naipaul’s "A Way in the World"

Abstract

This article seeks to interrogate the fractured identity images of the Antilles, Africa and Latin America in V.S. Naipaul's collection of memoirs and essays in A Way in the World (1994). It argues that Naipaul's reading and interpretation of the cultural and identity crisis in these regions suffers from a self inflicted alienation that has made him unable to appreciate the possibility of a new beginning at the end of slavery, indentureship and colonialism. Naipaul in this regard becomes a typical non-believer whose vision of the Caribbeans, Africa and Latin America is blighted by images of cyclic futility, macabre circumstances of existence, violence and primordial ritualism.