Conclusion

Abstract

Starting from a reading of his late travel book A Turn in the South, this chapter describes how, late in life, Naipaul came to understand his own specific historical vantage point, as a writer with a colonial upbringing, who had lived to see independence. Meditating on the legacy of Booker T. Washington, Naipaul reflects on ‘the prisons of the spirit men create for themselves and for others – so overpowering, so much part of the way things appear to have to be, and then, abruptly, with a little shift, so insubstantial’. My reading of A Turn in the South leads to a discussion of Naipaul’s position within Caribbean history, and literary history. I outline the ways in which Naipaul’s work, on the one hand, now seems outdated, and how, on the other hand and in other ways, his work may still be important today.