SOURCE: “In a Free State by V. S. Naipaul,” in Saturday Review, Vol. 54, October 23, 1971, pp. 91-2.

In the following review of In a Free State, Larson criticizes the short stories and novella for their pessimistic themes of emigrants suffering from prejudice as they lead lives in foreign lands.

Trinidadian writer V. S. Naipaul's latest work is composed of a prologue and an epilogue from his own travel journals, two short stories, and a novella. These five sections are loosely connected by the themes of exile, freedom, and prejudice. All of the situations are multiracial, and in each one we see people who are trapped—prisoners of the alien cultures around them. In the opening journal section Naipaul is crossing from Piraeus to Alexandria aboard a Greek steamer, on which he sees a tramp being roughed up by his cabin mates. In the epilogue Naipaul himself is the ostracized...