SOURCE: “Darkest Naipaulia,” in New Statesman, Vol. 82, No. 2116, October 8, 1971, pp. 282-83.

In the following review, Calder praises the two short stories of In a Free State for their ability to convey the fears and isolation of emigrants living in cultures destroyed by imperialism, but criticizes the book as a whole for being too pessimistic to recognize any positive signs for hope in the African continent.

For all his marvellous narrative skill, Naipaul's vision has often seemed at odds with the novel form. In his early genre stories, where Trinidad is perceived as a place where nothing grand or serious could possibly happen, the unwary reader is puzzled by a persistent thrust towards anti-climax. Lately he has seen the whole world as godless and disordered, the thin crust of a dying planet smeared with the trails of defeated empires. The Mimic Men imposed on it an order, that of...