SOURCE: Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. “The Enigma of Departure.” New Republic 196 (11 May 1987): 26-30.

In the following essay, Wheatcroft provides an overview of Naipaul's life and work as well as an evaluation of his posthumous work An Unfinished Journey.

In the summer of 1964 a young man of 19 sailed from his native Port-of-Spain for England. The scene is set in Shiva Naipaul's first novel, Fireflies:

Mr. and Mrs. Khoja were at the docks to see him off. Mrs. Lutchman wept profusely when the ship slipped its moorings.

“What you crying for?” Mr. Khoja said. “Just think, he going to come back a doctor. Dr. B. Lutchman. What you always wanted him to be. You should be laughing, not crying.”

“I know,” she replied. “But all the same, you know, when you spend years bringing up a child, is not an easy thing for a mother to see him leave she. He going...