V.S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men. Now that the uproar over Sir Vidia’s nastiness has started to subside, it’s worth recalling why we cared about him in the first place. Start with this bracingly astringent 1967 novel about a Caribbean politician whose uneasy embrace of Western manners and mores leaves him doubly estranged from the two worlds that he straddles. To my mind, it’s the best of Naipaul’s books–and the wisest (TT).
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
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