Miguel Street
V.S. Naipaul · 1959
Naipaul's first published book: interconnected stories of a Port of Spain street told through a child's eyes. The humor and sadness are inseparable, the colonial condition rendered from the inside. Nobel Prize body of work.
The case against
Sketches, really: each chapter introduces a street eccentric, watches his ambition curdle, and closes on the same rueful note, seventeen times over. Charming once, formulaic by the middle. And Naipaul's later contempt for Trinidad is already visible here in embryo; the laughter at these men sits close to looking down at them.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
