Author: V S Naipaul
Publisher: Picador India
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 546
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0330491180
Description
Naipaul's legendary command of broad comedy and acute social observation is on abundant display in these classic works of fiction - two novels and a collection of stories - that capture the rhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressive subtlety and humor.
This omnibus includes 'The Suffrage of Elvira' ; 'Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion' ; and 'A Flag on the Island'.
The Suffrage of Elvira is Naipaul's hilarious take on an electoral campaign in the backcountry of Trinidad, where the candidates tactics include blatant vote-buying and supernatural sabotage.
The eponymous protagonist of Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion is an ageing Englishman of ponderously regular habits whose life is thrown into upheaval by a sudden marriage and an unanticipated professional advancement.
And the stories in A Flag on the Island take us from Chinese bakery in Trinidad - whose black proprietor faces bankruptcy until he takes a Chinese name - to a rooming house in London, where the genteel landlady plays a nasty Darwinian game with her budgerigars.
Unfailing stylish, filled with intelligence and feeling, here is the work of a writer who can do just about anything that can be done with language.
PRAISE FOR THE AUTHOR AND BOOKS
V S Naipaul is the world's writer, a master of language and perception.
= The New York Times Book Review
As delightful as anything Naipaul has written.
=The New York Review of Books
V S Naipaul has a substantial claim as a comic writer…This humor, conducted throughout with the utmost stylistic quietude, is completely original.
= Kingsley Amis, The Spectator
Contents
THE SUFFRAGE OF ELVIRA
Prologue: A Bad Sign
The Bakshes
The Bargain with Chittaranjan
The Writing on the Wall
Tiger
Encounters
Encounters by Night
Dead Chicken
Dead Dog
The Retreat of the Witnesses
The New Candidate
A Departure
More Departures
Democracy Takes Root in Elvira
Epilogue: The Case of Whisky
MR STONE AND THE KNIGHTS COMPANION
My aunt Gold Teeth
The Raffle
A Christmas Story
The Mourners
The Night watchman's Occurrence Book
The Enemy
Greenie and Yellow
The Perfect tenants
The Heart
The Baker's Story
A Flag on the Island