V. S. Naipaul is a gifted contemporary novelist. No important guide to twentieth-century literature is presently without a reference to his work, which has been prolific. In the early stages of his career he was acclaimed as a West Indian and Commonwealth writer. The author's Caribbean upbringing, and the focus on Trinidad in his first novels, led the British literary establishment to position him as a Commonwealth writer, when this term was being newly applied to accommodate writings in English by subjects of Britain's former dominion. However, Naipaul has generally been concerned to resist such categorizations. More recently his work has been termed “postcolonial,” but its significance must be acknowledged to exceed that of any particular group interest or experience. His postcolonialism should be understood in the widest sense; this author is not so much the voice of any particular newly independent or decolonized nation, as the chronicler...