V S NAIPAUL - THE MIMIC MEN 1968

Living quietly and aimlessly in exile in a Home Counties hotel, Ralph Singh begins to write his memoirs, looking back over his early life on the Caribbean island of Isabella, his studentship and marriage in post-war London and his rise to and fall from power on his return to the island. He writes ostensibly to earn a little money and perhaps to redeem his political name, but really, as he discovers, to make some kind of sense of his life, to gain some sort of perspective on the world around him. This proves to be a harder task than he had imagined, for his island home is a complex place, an interweaving of many cultures and races where the struggle for power has bequeathed generations of simmering bitterness. It's a complicated place to live in, let alone govern. As Ralph looks back on the people and the culture that have shaped him he begins to understand the forces at work.

Readers Union, London, 1968. Hard Cover. 301pp, 7.5" tall. Good+ condition.