The chief source material for the guerrillas in this tale is the life of ‘Michael X’ (born Michael de Freitas, of mixed race, in Trinidad of a Portuguese father). (Michael X – Wikipedia)
Adopting a black Muslim identity, de Freitas worked in London as a thug for Peter Rachman. Then, seeing the incontrovertible truth of radical Islam, worked to promote Black Pride and Black Power. Going on to relieve various rich persons in London of their cash, he escaped UK justice by fleeing to Trinidad and proclaiming himself as a revolutionary leader.
The character Jimmy Ahmed takes the place of de Freitas in this novel. The unnamed West Indian island in the book is being polluted by a multi-national bauxite company. Other characters are Peter Roche, a white South African intellectual (who has Black liberation beliefs) and his upper class mistress Jane.
Naipaul shows that the characters are far from selfless revolutionaries. They are morally compromised degenerates. The whole tone of the novel is saturated with irony, and this is a large measure of the pleasure in reading it. The author deftly describes actors who are profoundly ignorant of the consequences of their actions.
Prepare for adult themes of death, hideous sexual violence, political and spiritual impotence. The reader is made aware of how large scale historical processes such as colonialism damage individual lives.
Vidia (Vidiadhar) Surajprasad Naipaul (VS Naipaul obituary | VS Naipaul | The Guardian), was born 17 August 1932 and died on 11 August 2018. He was the winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Literature for “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories” All Nobel Prizes in Literature – NobelPrize.org
This is one of the finest literary achievements of V.S. Naipaul. Check if it is in stock at your local library here Home | South Lanarkshire Libraries (sllclibrary.co.uk)
272 pages in Picador
First published 1975
ISBN-13 : 978-0330522915
