What do you think?
Rate this book
Guerrillas
From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes a novel of exile, displacement, and the agonizing cruelty and pain of colonialism, both for those who rule and those who are their victims.
“A brilliant novel in every way.… [It] shimmers with artistic certainty.” — The New York Times Book Review
Set on a troubled Carribbean island, where “everybody wants to fight his own little war,” where “everyone is a guerrilla,” the novel centers on an Englishman named Roche, once a hero of the South African resistance, who has come to the island – subdued now, almost withdrawn – to work and to help. Soon his English mistress casually nihilistic, bored, quickly enticed – excited – by fantasies of native power and sexuality, and blindly unaware of any possible consequences of her acts. At once Roche and Jane are drawn into fatal connection with a young guerrilla leader named Jimmy Ahmed, a man driven by his own raging fantasies of power, of perverse sensuality, and of the England he half remembers, half sentimentalizes. Against the larger anguish of the world they inhabit, these three act out a drama of death, hideous sexual violence, and political and spiritual impotence that profoundly reflects the ravages history can make on human lives.
“A brilliant novel in every way.… [It] shimmers with artistic certainty.” — The New York Times Book Review
Set on a troubled Carribbean island, where “everybody wants to fight his own little war,” where “everyone is a guerrilla,” the novel centers on an Englishman named Roche, once a hero of the South African resistance, who has come to the island – subdued now, almost withdrawn – to work and to help. Soon his English mistress casually nihilistic, bored, quickly enticed – excited – by fantasies of native power and sexuality, and blindly unaware of any possible consequences of her acts. At once Roche and Jane are drawn into fatal connection with a young guerrilla leader named Jimmy Ahmed, a man driven by his own raging fantasies of power, of perverse sensuality, and of the England he half remembers, half sentimentalizes. Against the larger anguish of the world they inhabit, these three act out a drama of death, hideous sexual violence, and political and spiritual impotence that profoundly reflects the ravages history can make on human lives.
248 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
About the author
V.S. Naipaul
129 books1,635 followersNaipaul was born and raised in Trinidad, to which his grandfathers had emigrated from India as indentured servants. He is known for the wistfully comic early novels of Trinidad, the bleaker novels of a wider world remade by the passage of peoples, and the vigilant chronicles of his life and travels, all written in characteristic, widely admired, prose.
At 17, he won a Trinidad Government scholarship to study abroad. In the introduction to the 20th-anniversary edition of A House for Mr. Biswas, he reflected that the scholarship would have allowed him to study any subject at any institution of higher learning in the British Commonwealth, but that he chose to go to Oxford to do a simple degree in English. He went, he wrote, "in order at last to write...." In August 1950, Naipaul boarded a Pan Am flight to New York, continuing the next day by boat to London.
50 years later, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
At 17, he won a Trinidad Government scholarship to study abroad. In the introduction to the 20th-anniversary edition of A House for Mr. Biswas, he reflected that the scholarship would have allowed him to study any subject at any institution of higher learning in the British Commonwealth, but that he chose to go to Oxford to do a simple degree in English. He went, he wrote, "in order at last to write...." In August 1950, Naipaul boarded a Pan Am flight to New York, continuing the next day by boat to London.
50 years later, Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad "V. S." Naipaul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews
June 18, 2023
Guerrillas is a vicious self-help novel for wounded colonized people and their guilty colonizers. That's not really true. Naipaul is not interested in the emancipation of humanity and is only interested in serving literature. He said so himself.
Guerrillas is a terrifying novel about race relations written with the sole intention of exposing liberals for what Naipaul perceives to be their banality. That's only partially true.
Guerrillas is a brutally honest novel about the inevitable lawlessness and anarchy that a country might descend into, when it is ruled by spiritually wounded and neurotic people. Yes, I guess that's what Guerrillas is really about.
The white woman as an object of ultimate sexual fulfillment (or disillusionment?). The well meaning white revolutionary drifting through his life in Africa, knowing deep in his heart that he should have left long ago or should never have come in the first place. The bewildered black rebel struggling with his own impotence and the mediocrity of his compatriots.
Even by Naipaul's standards, Guerrillas is an utterly devastating novel. I don't think he has ever reached this level of desolation ever again in his career. I cannot recommend it enough. It really is a great achievement. Even the biggest Naipaul fans like Marlon James hate this book. Even more reason to read it.
Francis Ford Coppolla wanted to make a film based on Guerrillas. He even optioned the rights. Naipaul and Coppolla met. George Lucas was present. Naipaul told Lucas that he knew nothing about Star Wars. The film never got made.
Guerrillas is a terrifying novel about race relations written with the sole intention of exposing liberals for what Naipaul perceives to be their banality. That's only partially true.
Guerrillas is a brutally honest novel about the inevitable lawlessness and anarchy that a country might descend into, when it is ruled by spiritually wounded and neurotic people. Yes, I guess that's what Guerrillas is really about.
The white woman as an object of ultimate sexual fulfillment (or disillusionment?). The well meaning white revolutionary drifting through his life in Africa, knowing deep in his heart that he should have left long ago or should never have come in the first place. The bewildered black rebel struggling with his own impotence and the mediocrity of his compatriots.
Even by Naipaul's standards, Guerrillas is an utterly devastating novel. I don't think he has ever reached this level of desolation ever again in his career. I cannot recommend it enough. It really is a great achievement. Even the biggest Naipaul fans like Marlon James hate this book. Even more reason to read it.
Francis Ford Coppolla wanted to make a film based on Guerrillas. He even optioned the rights. Naipaul and Coppolla met. George Lucas was present. Naipaul told Lucas that he knew nothing about Star Wars. The film never got made.
February 22, 2024
"I loathe all of these people. I hate this place." - Peter Roche, A South African civil rights advocate on a Caribbean Island, ‘Guerrillas’ 1975
“Hate oppression and fear the oppressed." - V S Naipaul, ‘The Mimic Men’ 1967
************
This 1975 novel by V S Naipaul was informed by his 1972 article about a black activist. Michael X had committed grisly murders in the author's birth country, Trinidad. The plot doesn't strictly follow those events however. As Naipaul wrote about Michael X's amateur novel, "Fiction never lies, it reveals the writer totally". This story is set in the West Indies, likely a version of Jamaica, "below the pink haze of bauxite dust", where he first visited in 1956. Details of the heat, the decay, slums, rum shops and reggae sounds are rendered in the vivid language Naipaul had perfected.
A new British employee Jane and South African Roche work for a company of former slave traders that donated land to a collective farm. They meet Jimmy, leader and manipulator of foreign funding, of mixed African and Chinese descent. He was well known in London as a black power activist. The commune is worked by abandoned boys from the city. There is tension between Roche and Jimmy as both are attracted to Jane. Each are flawed. Jimmy has delusions he is a savior to the locals while Roche enjoys his status above them. Jane imitates various belief systems acquired from others.
Jane stays on The Ridge, middle class enclave of ex-patriate business people. She regrets going there and being involved with Roche. She had come for the cause but bought a return ticket. She decides to go back to London, a security that her privilege affords, and find a man who is a doer. Outside the gates in the forest are guerrillas, wild and unseen. At the commune Jimmy is writing a story about Jane falling in love with him. As he writes his mania grows. He calls Jane and arranges to meet her alone. Unsatisfied with their encounter he returns to Bryant, one of the boys from the commune.
Roche had been a political prisoner in South Africa and wrote a book before coming to the island. Now in a meaningless job and rejected by Jane he senses failure. Friends move to Canada, US or the UK to escape aimlessness and instability. A commune boy returns to his gang in the city and is killed by the police. Jimmy leads a protest, an emergency is declared. Fires burn as the government flies away. US helicopters circle and warships anchor in the bay. Jimmy retreats to the commune as order is restored in the city. Bryant, insane over Jimmy's betrayal with Jane, looks to avenge himself.
As Naipaul said, you can't hide behind fiction. The plot and characters are an open door to the mind of the author. Non-fiction may claim to present events in a unbiased fashion. Reading 'The Killings in Trinidad" is a useful key to unlock his writing process. The bitterness and disillusion of natives and colonials is reflected clearly in this story. Since Naipaul experienced the period first hand there is an authenticity. Written shortly after his Booker award and meeting his long term mistress he felt freer to write. There are no inhibitions in this book. It is good but relentlessly dark and violent.
“Hate oppression and fear the oppressed." - V S Naipaul, ‘The Mimic Men’ 1967
************
This 1975 novel by V S Naipaul was informed by his 1972 article about a black activist. Michael X had committed grisly murders in the author's birth country, Trinidad. The plot doesn't strictly follow those events however. As Naipaul wrote about Michael X's amateur novel, "Fiction never lies, it reveals the writer totally". This story is set in the West Indies, likely a version of Jamaica, "below the pink haze of bauxite dust", where he first visited in 1956. Details of the heat, the decay, slums, rum shops and reggae sounds are rendered in the vivid language Naipaul had perfected.
A new British employee Jane and South African Roche work for a company of former slave traders that donated land to a collective farm. They meet Jimmy, leader and manipulator of foreign funding, of mixed African and Chinese descent. He was well known in London as a black power activist. The commune is worked by abandoned boys from the city. There is tension between Roche and Jimmy as both are attracted to Jane. Each are flawed. Jimmy has delusions he is a savior to the locals while Roche enjoys his status above them. Jane imitates various belief systems acquired from others.
Jane stays on The Ridge, middle class enclave of ex-patriate business people. She regrets going there and being involved with Roche. She had come for the cause but bought a return ticket. She decides to go back to London, a security that her privilege affords, and find a man who is a doer. Outside the gates in the forest are guerrillas, wild and unseen. At the commune Jimmy is writing a story about Jane falling in love with him. As he writes his mania grows. He calls Jane and arranges to meet her alone. Unsatisfied with their encounter he returns to Bryant, one of the boys from the commune.
Roche had been a political prisoner in South Africa and wrote a book before coming to the island. Now in a meaningless job and rejected by Jane he senses failure. Friends move to Canada, US or the UK to escape aimlessness and instability. A commune boy returns to his gang in the city and is killed by the police. Jimmy leads a protest, an emergency is declared. Fires burn as the government flies away. US helicopters circle and warships anchor in the bay. Jimmy retreats to the commune as order is restored in the city. Bryant, insane over Jimmy's betrayal with Jane, looks to avenge himself.
As Naipaul said, you can't hide behind fiction. The plot and characters are an open door to the mind of the author. Non-fiction may claim to present events in a unbiased fashion. Reading 'The Killings in Trinidad" is a useful key to unlock his writing process. The bitterness and disillusion of natives and colonials is reflected clearly in this story. Since Naipaul experienced the period first hand there is an authenticity. Written shortly after his Booker award and meeting his long term mistress he felt freer to write. There are no inhibitions in this book. It is good but relentlessly dark and violent.
April 17, 2017
This is only my first read Naipaul -- I listened (via audible) to Bend in the River, and loved it -- and so this is far too slender a frame on which to rate an author as complex as Naipaul. Plus, he writes with a density that makes his work, and the reader's work, somewhat knotty. There is a deep neuroticism not only in the content, but even in the rhythm of his prose.
This particular novel shows, unstintingly, the author's foulness: his profound pessimism about human beings (presumably about human nature), and his almost nauseatingly patent misogyny. The characters are drawn with great depth and individuality; not one of them is sympathetic.
One of the principal characters in this novel is the landscape - also ugly, exhausted, dry, drought-stricken, filled with shrubs and deadened grasses, tin-roofed and corrugated shanty-huts..., and the sun, and the heat, and the heat, and the glare..., all set against these brilliant tropical sunsets -- that create a suffocating mood -- yet one that nonetheless opens onto certain remarkable vistas that are hinted at, somewhere in the beyond -- it is so hard to explain....
Not for the overly faint of heart, is Naipaul - though at least this book, Guerrillas, is both short and readable.
This particular novel shows, unstintingly, the author's foulness: his profound pessimism about human beings (presumably about human nature), and his almost nauseatingly patent misogyny. The characters are drawn with great depth and individuality; not one of them is sympathetic.
One of the principal characters in this novel is the landscape - also ugly, exhausted, dry, drought-stricken, filled with shrubs and deadened grasses, tin-roofed and corrugated shanty-huts..., and the sun, and the heat, and the heat, and the glare..., all set against these brilliant tropical sunsets -- that create a suffocating mood -- yet one that nonetheless opens onto certain remarkable vistas that are hinted at, somewhere in the beyond -- it is so hard to explain....
Not for the overly faint of heart, is Naipaul - though at least this book, Guerrillas, is both short and readable.
March 2, 2013
I'm not sure how to put my feelings about this book into words, but I'll try. This is not a fun novel. This is not a nice novel. This is a vicerally powerful and profoundly disturbing novel. The tension begins to build with the very first word, and doesn't let up until the very last. Naipaul is a master of creating atmosphere. You physically feel the tension in the interplay between characters, and the hysteria bubbling away just below the surface makes your heart beat faster. This is not a novel about guerrillas, freedom fighters, or the right to self-rule. It is a novel about power; those who have it, those who want it, those who take it. Through the damaged characters who populate this novel we see the power struggles played out on a petty scale, while in the background they are echoed in grander style. This is a novel told on two different levels; each character is distinctly human, and yet each character is a metaphor for an aspect of the post-colonial world. Through their interactions with each other a disturbing personal drama is played out, and at the same time this drama reveals to us the struggles of a former colony trying to find its way is a new era. That Naipaul can tell both these stories so seamlessly in a single narrative is amazing.
November 8, 2010
A revolution in a small Caribbean island exposes deviant sexuality, and gender and racial hatred among its principal characters. They truly are lost souls without hope of redemption.
Jimmy Ahmed is the unlikely bi-sexual, mixed-breed revolutionary, who hates England for having made him into a plaything and who hides out in a foreign-sponsored farm on his native island waiting for the moment to spring his revolution. My problem with Jimmy is that he does not appear to have charisma that will inspire a wide revolutionary following—in fact, there is no evidence of a following, more the opposite, with recruits leaving the farm—except for Jane the conflicted Englishwoman and Bryant his jealous young male lover. And Jimmy’s ruthlessness is only directed towards women—he is not your regular Che Guavara who orchestrates lightning raids and moves about steaming jungles with a motley band of armed guerrillas. Roche the former South African hero who endured torture and wrote a book about it is also somewhat impotent, his relationship with Jane ending, his farm project on the island languishing. And Jane herself, the succubus, cold to Roche, attracted to Jimmy and to his deviant sexuality, is not sure if her place belongs on the island or back in England.
Most of the story happens in the minds of these characters, and the revolution, when it does erupt, happens off-stage and is a damp squib, quickly put out by the authorities and the police (who are fed by the islanders – so where are the guerrillas and where is their support base?), and the foreign investors who are eager to protect their investment. And Jimmy is left isolated in his farm, seemingly immune from arrest, with no followers, thirsting to avenge himself on Jane and Roche who represent the colonial yoke that thwarts true change on the island. Among the locals, the establishment of the state of Israel around that time seems to be their only sign of hope; they believe that Africa’s and, by extension, their island’s turn is next – how, they do not know, or seem to care about.
I wondered if this story was a metaphor for the author’s own trajectory from a Caribbean island to fame in England as a writer, where he has won every conceivable literary prize but where he still refers to himself as being in exile. Jimmy stands out as the neutered colonial outpost while Jane and Roche represent the equally improvident mother country, unable to provide any more and therefore needing to pay for the sins of the past.
I was amused to discover little-used words like “dirtiness,” “youngish,” “racialist,” “that that,” “had had,” and “straiter” – colonial words that I had once used and have now forgotten.
The style is intellectual, much of the plot is revealed through discussions between the expatriates and the wealthy locals (who have compromised their principles and increased their waistlines or obtained landed immigrant status in Canada), and through character introspections. I also found the descriptions of the island vivid but excessive and they intruded on the pacing.
On the other hand, whenever Naipaul speaks in the patois of the locals, it reveals much and is very incisive.
I have been a big fan of Naipaul and have enjoyed his earlier works and his non-fiction travel writings. Yet I have had trouble with his “middle passage” books like this one and even his most recent ones.
Perhaps a colonial writer at some point needs to shuck the yoke of his origins and move onto other themes.
Jimmy Ahmed is the unlikely bi-sexual, mixed-breed revolutionary, who hates England for having made him into a plaything and who hides out in a foreign-sponsored farm on his native island waiting for the moment to spring his revolution. My problem with Jimmy is that he does not appear to have charisma that will inspire a wide revolutionary following—in fact, there is no evidence of a following, more the opposite, with recruits leaving the farm—except for Jane the conflicted Englishwoman and Bryant his jealous young male lover. And Jimmy’s ruthlessness is only directed towards women—he is not your regular Che Guavara who orchestrates lightning raids and moves about steaming jungles with a motley band of armed guerrillas. Roche the former South African hero who endured torture and wrote a book about it is also somewhat impotent, his relationship with Jane ending, his farm project on the island languishing. And Jane herself, the succubus, cold to Roche, attracted to Jimmy and to his deviant sexuality, is not sure if her place belongs on the island or back in England.
Most of the story happens in the minds of these characters, and the revolution, when it does erupt, happens off-stage and is a damp squib, quickly put out by the authorities and the police (who are fed by the islanders – so where are the guerrillas and where is their support base?), and the foreign investors who are eager to protect their investment. And Jimmy is left isolated in his farm, seemingly immune from arrest, with no followers, thirsting to avenge himself on Jane and Roche who represent the colonial yoke that thwarts true change on the island. Among the locals, the establishment of the state of Israel around that time seems to be their only sign of hope; they believe that Africa’s and, by extension, their island’s turn is next – how, they do not know, or seem to care about.
I wondered if this story was a metaphor for the author’s own trajectory from a Caribbean island to fame in England as a writer, where he has won every conceivable literary prize but where he still refers to himself as being in exile. Jimmy stands out as the neutered colonial outpost while Jane and Roche represent the equally improvident mother country, unable to provide any more and therefore needing to pay for the sins of the past.
I was amused to discover little-used words like “dirtiness,” “youngish,” “racialist,” “that that,” “had had,” and “straiter” – colonial words that I had once used and have now forgotten.
The style is intellectual, much of the plot is revealed through discussions between the expatriates and the wealthy locals (who have compromised their principles and increased their waistlines or obtained landed immigrant status in Canada), and through character introspections. I also found the descriptions of the island vivid but excessive and they intruded on the pacing.
On the other hand, whenever Naipaul speaks in the patois of the locals, it reveals much and is very incisive.
I have been a big fan of Naipaul and have enjoyed his earlier works and his non-fiction travel writings. Yet I have had trouble with his “middle passage” books like this one and even his most recent ones.
Perhaps a colonial writer at some point needs to shuck the yoke of his origins and move onto other themes.
September 23, 2018
V.S Naipaul received noble prize in literature and therefore his works deserve to be respected. This is his first book, i have read and it has been a disaster. A dark violent book, I failed to understand what is the theme. Depressing and without coherence of idea, I found the book to be outlet for Naipaul's own fantasy and ideas about racism and poverty. A difficult to comprehend story line, the book fails to hold interest. Boring read.
May 8, 2018
this is not exactly True Crime because the events have been fictionalized (sort of) and names changed. a lot of people here don't know this (judging by the reviews) but this is based on the murder of a British socialite, Gale Benson (Jane), at the hands of the popular black activist Michael X (Jimmy Ahmed) in the 70s, for which he was never tried exactly (but he was hanged to death for another murder). Naipaul has done justice to the story. the narrative is terrific; a resultant of good reporting.
July 16, 2023
This was a very oppressive, brooding novel where the economically and environmentally ravaged colony (never specified but with certain similarities to Naipaul's Trinidad) overshadows the often unlikeable characters.
A disillusioned male aid worker, a damaged, bordering on bipolar female journalist and the mysterious head of a failing experimental commune whom the multi nationals are supporting as part of their "caring" credentials dance a macabre routine as the novel progresses and unrest in the colony reaches boiling point.
I enjoyed the extremely atmospheric description of the tropical climate in the midst of a devastating drought and it's effects on the inhabitants and as a Brit thought Naipaul expertly portrayed the brooding threat that the dominating white minority felt under at the start of the novel, escalating to panic as local police struggle to contain the disorder after a young man is shot dead by officers.
Recommended but be aware it is not an uplifting novel .
A disillusioned male aid worker, a damaged, bordering on bipolar female journalist and the mysterious head of a failing experimental commune whom the multi nationals are supporting as part of their "caring" credentials dance a macabre routine as the novel progresses and unrest in the colony reaches boiling point.
I enjoyed the extremely atmospheric description of the tropical climate in the midst of a devastating drought and it's effects on the inhabitants and as a Brit thought Naipaul expertly portrayed the brooding threat that the dominating white minority felt under at the start of the novel, escalating to panic as local police struggle to contain the disorder after a young man is shot dead by officers.
Recommended but be aware it is not an uplifting novel .
March 8, 2018
The premise of this novel had much promise, but sadly the execution was lacking. In terms of style, we have different point of views with different chapters, as is common with most third-person POV. But of the 3 characters whose perspectives we share, the two most interesting—Jane and Jimmy—have the spotlight a lot less than the uninteresting Roche. Worse yet, Jimmy's is early in the novel and then we are left with a cliffhanger that foreshadows Jane's demise, so we are left reading over 100 pages, waiting for the foreboding moment the foreshadowed climax takes place (when we finally return to Jimmy's POV). Not a necessarily good technique but I suppose one that is needed due to the flat delivery of the political turmoil surrounding the characters, which we never really feel, as we are too close to the petty discomforts of the white man in Africa syndrome. The amount of times the words 'heat', 'armpit sweat' and 'sweat' are mentioned is overbearing.
Furthermore, the novel doesn't really start till page 40, it is simply bogged down by so much descriptive narrative, reminiscent of typical classic English novels that it is simply boring. I would have expected to have a more beautiful impression of the South African land (which the author has also visited), after all that narrative, but I was only left with the impressions of how unpleasant it is. It's sad really, having grown up in Nigeria myself, to see how little is depicted of the beauty of nature and culture.
And finally... Jane; what the hell Mr Naipaul? I'm fine with the gruesome events that happen to her, hey this is a novel and so be it. But can you not at least develop a complex and mature woman, whom the reader can feel for and respect as an individual—even disliking her would be fine—just some damn emotion stirred up from me as a reader would be nice! She falls flat that when the horrific event happens, I'm left thinking 'oh how awful, oh well...' and that's that. That's not a failing on my part, that's a failing on the writer's part for not letting us care for her. He uses the word schoolgirl as an adjective throughout the novel to describe a mature woman in a complex relationship who has already seen her share of hardship... Jane is simply a sex device to categorically convenience the male-dominated plot he wishes to write about. I can see why Naipaul is construed as a misogynist. In fact he is, but I'd hoped real life and fiction to be separate mediums, since fiction writing should service the story, not the writer's personal beliefs. Sad...
Furthermore, the novel doesn't really start till page 40, it is simply bogged down by so much descriptive narrative, reminiscent of typical classic English novels that it is simply boring. I would have expected to have a more beautiful impression of the South African land (which the author has also visited), after all that narrative, but I was only left with the impressions of how unpleasant it is. It's sad really, having grown up in Nigeria myself, to see how little is depicted of the beauty of nature and culture.
And finally... Jane; what the hell Mr Naipaul? I'm fine with the gruesome events that happen to her, hey this is a novel and so be it. But can you not at least develop a complex and mature woman, whom the reader can feel for and respect as an individual—even disliking her would be fine—just some damn emotion stirred up from me as a reader would be nice! She falls flat that when the horrific event happens, I'm left thinking 'oh how awful, oh well...' and that's that. That's not a failing on my part, that's a failing on the writer's part for not letting us care for her. He uses the word schoolgirl as an adjective throughout the novel to describe a mature woman in a complex relationship who has already seen her share of hardship... Jane is simply a sex device to categorically convenience the male-dominated plot he wishes to write about. I can see why Naipaul is construed as a misogynist. In fact he is, but I'd hoped real life and fiction to be separate mediums, since fiction writing should service the story, not the writer's personal beliefs. Sad...
October 17, 2017
Flawed Figures Fail to Fathom Fate's Façade
I've been a fan of V.S. Naipaul's writing for decades, both his novels and his rather gloomy travel writing. It is certainly true that a very disappointed air hangs over his work; nothing fails to let him down, the world is basically a bummer. The flaws of his characters loom much larger than their positive points. Still, he's a great writer and certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. But I'm afraid that every great writer has his off moments and that's what I feel we are looking at here. Set in an unspecified Caribbean country which might be Jamaica (it's an island and has reggae and bauxite), but is probably a mix of locations, GUERRILLAS draws a faint picture of an English "carpetbagger" trying to do good while earning a decent salary and living with the island elite on "The Ridge" above the un-named capital. He has linked up with a self-centered, unthinking woman and gotten involved in a dubious "back to the land" project with some unsavory island figures. There is an attempted coup or rebellion, but it doesn't come to much even though the Americans send in some forces. No, I haven't spoiled your story because there is hardly any story at all. The book is a psychological study of the several main characters and masterful description of a decaying ex-colonial society that is floundering. If you read this novel, you will read it for Naipaul's style, for the exquisite details. Everything else is vague, diffident, so very English, and understated. The characters don't know what is going on right up to the end and really, neither do you. The basic idea is that we are all pawns in Fate's chess game. We hardly understand the moves we make or are dealt. It is a novel of style and of personality, not of action---though there is a bit of sex---or of plot. I thought it the least of all Naipaul's novels that I've read (at least 5 others). Perhaps his attempt to write about purely English characters, compared to the novels about Trinidad which he knew so intimately, was not successful. See what you think.
I've been a fan of V.S. Naipaul's writing for decades, both his novels and his rather gloomy travel writing. It is certainly true that a very disappointed air hangs over his work; nothing fails to let him down, the world is basically a bummer. The flaws of his characters loom much larger than their positive points. Still, he's a great writer and certainly deserved the Nobel Prize. But I'm afraid that every great writer has his off moments and that's what I feel we are looking at here. Set in an unspecified Caribbean country which might be Jamaica (it's an island and has reggae and bauxite), but is probably a mix of locations, GUERRILLAS draws a faint picture of an English "carpetbagger" trying to do good while earning a decent salary and living with the island elite on "The Ridge" above the un-named capital. He has linked up with a self-centered, unthinking woman and gotten involved in a dubious "back to the land" project with some unsavory island figures. There is an attempted coup or rebellion, but it doesn't come to much even though the Americans send in some forces. No, I haven't spoiled your story because there is hardly any story at all. The book is a psychological study of the several main characters and masterful description of a decaying ex-colonial society that is floundering. If you read this novel, you will read it for Naipaul's style, for the exquisite details. Everything else is vague, diffident, so very English, and understated. The characters don't know what is going on right up to the end and really, neither do you. The basic idea is that we are all pawns in Fate's chess game. We hardly understand the moves we make or are dealt. It is a novel of style and of personality, not of action---though there is a bit of sex---or of plot. I thought it the least of all Naipaul's novels that I've read (at least 5 others). Perhaps his attempt to write about purely English characters, compared to the novels about Trinidad which he knew so intimately, was not successful. See what you think.
May 16, 2012
The last Naipaul I read, A House for Mr. Biswas, disappointed me, but this one has great force. It is a complex rumination on post-colonial life -- identity, race, power, sex, and politics.
Set in an unnamed Caribbean island based on Naipaul's own Trinidad, the island is independent and self-governing, but still dominated by the British colonial elite. The main characters are white liberals who find their politics and sentimentality overcome by events, particularly in their complex relationships with a local politician and a local black power revolutionary. Throughout the novel the dread is slowly unwinding until the terrifying ending.
Since I have read Patrick French's biography of Naipaul, I can't read Naipaul anymore without the lens of that biography. Naipaul had arranged for French to write an authorized biography, and French's final work is highly critical of Naipaul the person, painting him as misogynist, ambitious, arrogant, and a user in a way that destroys the women in his life. Naipaul allowed the biography to go forward, but has dismissed its portrayal of him.
I couldn't distance myself from reading Naipaul' portrayal of Jane, one of the main characters in Guerrillas, as itself misogynistic. So, that adds it own layer of complexity -- not only are gender and sex important themes in the novel, they are in the approach to the story by the author and reader.
Set in an unnamed Caribbean island based on Naipaul's own Trinidad, the island is independent and self-governing, but still dominated by the British colonial elite. The main characters are white liberals who find their politics and sentimentality overcome by events, particularly in their complex relationships with a local politician and a local black power revolutionary. Throughout the novel the dread is slowly unwinding until the terrifying ending.
Since I have read Patrick French's biography of Naipaul, I can't read Naipaul anymore without the lens of that biography. Naipaul had arranged for French to write an authorized biography, and French's final work is highly critical of Naipaul the person, painting him as misogynist, ambitious, arrogant, and a user in a way that destroys the women in his life. Naipaul allowed the biography to go forward, but has dismissed its portrayal of him.
I couldn't distance myself from reading Naipaul' portrayal of Jane, one of the main characters in Guerrillas, as itself misogynistic. So, that adds it own layer of complexity -- not only are gender and sex important themes in the novel, they are in the approach to the story by the author and reader.
August 9, 2020
"Guerrillas" ist mein 13. Naipaul (unglaublich) und wird sicherlich nicht der letzte sein, da der 2018 verstorbene Nobelpreisträger all das zu bieten hat, was ich an einem Autor schätze. Vielschreiber mit konstant hoher Qualität. Hohe thematische Varianz ohne in Beliebigkeit zu verfallen. Und er lässt sich in keine Schublade pressen.
"Guerrillas" ist typisch für Naipauls fiktionalen Romane der 70er (ich bevorzuge siene Non-Fiktion). Eine düstere Abrechnung mit den revolutionären Fantasien des Postkolonialismus. Tiefer Pessimismus gegenüber der Unabhängigkeit der Kolonien, ohne indes in Hochmut zu verfallen. Die profunde Ablehnung jedweder Ideologie und zugleich Sympathie und Respekt für diejenigen, die sich Idealismus und Ideologie leisten. Naipaul treibt dies in diesem Roman auf die Spitze, in dem er jeden einzelnen seiner Charaktere als moralischen Versager entlarvt.
"Guerrillas" ist insoweit atypisch als sexuelle Gewalt eine Rolle spielt. Typisch für Naipaul gelingt es ihm, in wenigen Sätzen Grausamkeiten unterzubringen, die andere plastischer über Seiten ausbreiten würden.
"Guerrillas" ist typisch für Naipauls fiktionalen Romane der 70er (ich bevorzuge siene Non-Fiktion). Eine düstere Abrechnung mit den revolutionären Fantasien des Postkolonialismus. Tiefer Pessimismus gegenüber der Unabhängigkeit der Kolonien, ohne indes in Hochmut zu verfallen. Die profunde Ablehnung jedweder Ideologie und zugleich Sympathie und Respekt für diejenigen, die sich Idealismus und Ideologie leisten. Naipaul treibt dies in diesem Roman auf die Spitze, in dem er jeden einzelnen seiner Charaktere als moralischen Versager entlarvt.
"Guerrillas" ist insoweit atypisch als sexuelle Gewalt eine Rolle spielt. Typisch für Naipaul gelingt es ihm, in wenigen Sätzen Grausamkeiten unterzubringen, die andere plastischer über Seiten ausbreiten würden.
July 9, 2021
I think that I am still processing this book. I just didn't feel it. Maybe it was too short and needed more. Then again, I didn't want to read it anymore. I tried to like it. I just didn't.
I thought that the ending needed to be addressed. I mean, seriously, look at what happened to Jane. I don't like the character but still...I guess sometimes it just ends there. There was no comfortable resolution but I guess that's the point. It disturbed me that it just ended like that. They all seemed to have accepted what had happened and were willing to move on just like that.
I know that this took some inspiration from Michael X and the killings that occurred. Those murders were awful and so the book echoes a lot of that. Life does not always provide suitable resolutions, at least not in the way people can understand so I guess that the ending does work, as unsettling as it was.
I thought that the ending needed to be addressed. I mean, seriously, look at what happened to Jane. I don't like the character but still...I guess sometimes it just ends there. There was no comfortable resolution but I guess that's the point. It disturbed me that it just ended like that. They all seemed to have accepted what had happened and were willing to move on just like that.
I know that this took some inspiration from Michael X and the killings that occurred. Those murders were awful and so the book echoes a lot of that. Life does not always provide suitable resolutions, at least not in the way people can understand so I guess that the ending does work, as unsettling as it was.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 30, 2019
A rather dark, depressing, unpleasant book with some unlikeable characters. It takes place on a Caribbean island and follows a white liberal man, his girlfriend and a black man who is a revolutionary. The book seemed a little disjointed to me and I was a bit disappointed because I've read better works by Naipaul.
April 26, 2018
Guerrillas is set in an historical moment; it is about the disaster of colonialism, or rather colonialism as disaster, unmitigated. We are in a post-colonial unnamed mixed-race Caribbean Island, probably Trinidad, Naipaul’s birthplace, sunk in such desuetude and exhaustion, it is difficult to see how it can have any functioning future. The Americans are raping the land, the locals are petty and corrupt, any political resistance is in disarray: there is no hope. The landscape reflects the life: polluted, drought-stricken, garbage-strewn etc. Into this tropical anti-paradise waltzes Roche, a failed South African revolutionary, and his girlfriend/mistress, Jane, an aimless upper-middle-class twit seeking excitement. The third in the ménage is Jimmy, another failed revolutionary but still having a go at it; he is, after all, a local. These three play off against one another in rising tension, physical and psychological.
The major figures are all men, save Jane, who is almost identical in character to the similarly placed female in the last novel of Naipaul’s I read: A Bend in the River. She is white, hypocritical, weak, sexually voracious, privileged, and seems to stand as a general symbol for the old colonial order. As such, she is an object of hate and destructive violence for those who feel disenfranchised by the colonial ‘experiment’. What happens to Jane, which is the climax of the novel, for this reader, is a case of objective symbolism merging into private misogyny, which extends throughout to a general misanthropy. There is not one likeable person in this book. Furthermore, it is plain that humans simply aren’t up to the task of managing themselves, either personally or publicly. The inevitable result is a sort of enervated chaos, with occasional outbursts of horrific violence. Nothing else seems possible, well certainly not in any post-colonial world, but Naipaul suggests that things aren’t much better in London either; the violence and chaos is masked and muted, that’s all.
It is all brilliantly done, particularly the evocation of place. Naipaul employs a dense descriptive prose, at times as suffocating as his story; the characters are complex and subtle, even if directionless. But the relentless pessimism and anger and hate, made me feel as if I was being harangued by a barroom crank, no room to disagree, and his smell lingers. The narrative methodically closes down possibilities, eventually excluding the reader.
All up, it is a very nasty tale told very well.
The major figures are all men, save Jane, who is almost identical in character to the similarly placed female in the last novel of Naipaul’s I read: A Bend in the River. She is white, hypocritical, weak, sexually voracious, privileged, and seems to stand as a general symbol for the old colonial order. As such, she is an object of hate and destructive violence for those who feel disenfranchised by the colonial ‘experiment’. What happens to Jane, which is the climax of the novel, for this reader, is a case of objective symbolism merging into private misogyny, which extends throughout to a general misanthropy. There is not one likeable person in this book. Furthermore, it is plain that humans simply aren’t up to the task of managing themselves, either personally or publicly. The inevitable result is a sort of enervated chaos, with occasional outbursts of horrific violence. Nothing else seems possible, well certainly not in any post-colonial world, but Naipaul suggests that things aren’t much better in London either; the violence and chaos is masked and muted, that’s all.
It is all brilliantly done, particularly the evocation of place. Naipaul employs a dense descriptive prose, at times as suffocating as his story; the characters are complex and subtle, even if directionless. But the relentless pessimism and anger and hate, made me feel as if I was being harangued by a barroom crank, no room to disagree, and his smell lingers. The narrative methodically closes down possibilities, eventually excluding the reader.
All up, it is a very nasty tale told very well.
November 13, 2015
You can see but you should not touch. That is the rule of the bush.
Read
July 8, 2016Did a review of this book here: https://youtu.be/NJY9KccApgs
Read
November 4, 2019Guerrillas will leave you with so many questions until you know what really happened in history. However, Naipaul's elegance in storytelling is the catch here.
January 30, 2023
Black vs. white, natives vs. foreigners, towns vs hillsides, interracial sex vs. homosexuality, are only a few of the many underlying themes taken head on by Naipaul in this thought provoking novel; themes brought to vivid life through Naipaul's terse and precise prose which was remarkable in evoking the emotions boiling over on this isolated island. Despair, simmering rage, and the potential for violence and volatility were palpable throughout. Smoke, fires, shadows, stagnant water, smells, dense forest, decaying cars, vacant warehouses, abandoned plantations, all are beautifully described to set the stage for this theater of tensions around social injustice and colonialism. In the end, the tragic eventualities of unrest serve only as a pause in the status quo of chaos before the next revolution begins. Although at times gripping and suspenseful, this story about the struggle for power on a small island, and control over the fate of it's inhabitants, lacked coherence across the many themes and ultimately fell a bit short. Nonetheless, a very entertaining and worthwhile read.
July 27, 2013
This is the first Naipaul book I have read and it was a bracing experience - not exactly enjoyable but compelling and thought-provoking (a cinematic analogy would be a Michael Haneke film perhaps, in whcih the reader is also complicit in the misdeeds being described). The book's general theme is the post-colonial era of revolutionary ferment in the Caribbean in the 70s, when political movements still harboured hopes of a radical transformation of society along leftist lines. The tone is overwhelmingly acrid, though, and this asperity hangs over the proceedings like the bauxite dust over the city or the US helicopters that mysteriously appear during the insurrection like the much-cited 'corbeau carrion'.
There is a charismatic local leader (Jimmy) who was lauded in the West for his idealism and writings, and is now back in his own land, and a white idealist (Roche) who runs a communal land project (which is being used by the guerrillas as a base),and works for the local multinational, and has a history of liberal struggle in Africa, and his mistress (Jane), who was Jimmy's publisher's publicist when he was in London - she seems like a cipher for white fantasies of black sexual power and the least convincing protagonist. There is a lot of dialogue but there is a very strong sense of place evoked, and of an atmosphere of suppressed violence and danger, which finally erupts. Naipaul clearly has little time for white liberals, and the two here get treated fairly badly (especially the woman), but neither does he romanticise in any way the locals, who are also depicted as venal, vicious and unable to break free from the dominance of the imposed imperial culture and structures. The spectre of the corporate-military power of the US hovers in the background, though the characters do not speak much of it.
There is a charismatic local leader (Jimmy) who was lauded in the West for his idealism and writings, and is now back in his own land, and a white idealist (Roche) who runs a communal land project (which is being used by the guerrillas as a base),and works for the local multinational, and has a history of liberal struggle in Africa, and his mistress (Jane), who was Jimmy's publisher's publicist when he was in London - she seems like a cipher for white fantasies of black sexual power and the least convincing protagonist. There is a lot of dialogue but there is a very strong sense of place evoked, and of an atmosphere of suppressed violence and danger, which finally erupts. Naipaul clearly has little time for white liberals, and the two here get treated fairly badly (especially the woman), but neither does he romanticise in any way the locals, who are also depicted as venal, vicious and unable to break free from the dominance of the imposed imperial culture and structures. The spectre of the corporate-military power of the US hovers in the background, though the characters do not speak much of it.
January 22, 2008
Death, sex, and revolution make up this book, though mostly it follows the stories of elitist white people selfishly mourning their miserably alienated lives. If you like reading the words "decay" and "desolation" over and over, enjoy!
June 8, 2012
pretty good book, but not great. beautifully written but kind of boring. he really likes writing about vapid white women, because he's a big misogynist and a 'player'
June 5, 2018
Just cannot go on with his choppy style
Shelved as 'fic-guided'
July 16, 2020He’s a great novelist – we have the Nobel Prize Committee’s assurance for it. But which is Naipaul’s greatest novel? My vote would go to Guerrillas. Like much of his best fiction it has a hard kernel of historical fact, laced with the author’s particular brand of acidic contempt and some plausible fictional extrapolation. Marxist analysis likes to see guerrillas as proto-revolutionaries. The dyspeptic Naipaul sees them as harbingers of chaos. The novel’s epigraph (repeated in the body of the text) is:
When everybody wants to fight there’s nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerrilla.
The central ‘guerrilla’ in Guerrillas is based on ‘Michael X’, self-named in imitation of the American Malcolm X. He was born Michael de Freitas, of mixed race, in Trinidad (Naipaul was born there a few months earlier). The son of a Portuguese father, he could had he wished have ‘passed’ for white. He chose, instead, to embrace a black Muslim identity; another of his self-awarded names was ‘Abdul Malik’. Before he became political, de Freitas worked in London as a thug enforcer for the crook/property tycoon, Peter Rachman – linked through Rachman’s mistress, Mandy Rice-Davies, to the Profumo scandal. After being ‘radicalised’, he attracted publicity as an evangelist for Black Power and Black Pride. Having fleeced various rich bien-pensant dupes in the UK (John Lennon, famously), and falling foul of the law, Michael X fled back to Trinidad as a self-declared revolutionary leader. Among the ‘commune’ he set up there was an English convert, Gale Benson, the daughter of a Tory MP. She was killed – hacked to death like a side of beef. De Freitas was convicted of murder and hanged in 1975.
A fascinated Naipaul wrote a long essay on the subject, ‘Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad’ (1979), and a fictional version of de Freitas appears as the central character, Jimmy Ahmed, in Guerrillas. The novel complicates things well beyond the strict historical record. The action is set on an unnamed West Indian island, manifestly Trinidad, polluted – atmospherically and socially – by a multinational bauxite mining company. The three principals are: a white South African intellectual, Peter Roche, exiled for his Black Liberation sympathies; his mistress, an upper-class white woman, Jane; and Jimmy Ahmed, on the run from the UK, where he is wanted for rape. Ahmed has a ‘catamite’, one of the many boys he keeps, as a kind of posse, on his farm. He also, when he feels the need, borrows Jane from the complaisant Roche, who sees it as furthering the revolution. The multinational finances Ahmed with bribes – as insurance, in case he really does trigger a popular uprising and take things over.
The title – Guerrillas – is ironic: these are not freedom fighters, they are degenerates. The irony permeating the whole novel is implicit in the first sentence: ‘After lunch Jane and Roche left their house on the Ridge to drive to Thrushcross Grange.’ The allusions are mischievously obvious. Jane [Eyre] and Roche[ster] leave for the house which represents civilisation (as opposed to the savagery of Heathcliff’s house) in Wuthering Heights. The first Mrs Rochester, we recall, originated in the West Indies. Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s Jane, Naipaul’s will end up raped by her super-potent black lover and murdered by his accomplice. Everything, every value – moral, spiritual, ideological – is decayed. Naipaul contrives a landscape which breathes irremediable corruption:
The cleared land had been ridged and furrowed from end to end. The furrows were full of shiny green weeds; and the ridges, one or two of which showed haphazard, failed planting, were light brown and looked as dry as bone.
Looking at it through the car window, Jane says: ‘I used to think that England was in a state of decay.’ Roche replies, ironically, ‘Decayed from what?’
The narrative is laced with ineffable contempt for the author’s birthplace and what, after independence, it has more or less become. The plot follows the Michael X story, but with the difference that (having murdered his male lover) Jimmy goes on the run and escapes the rope. Roche leaves for a safer part of the world in which to play at guerrillas. The novel ends with Roche phoning Jimmy, warning him to keep his head down. God help the world if Naipaul’s world-view is accurate.
When everybody wants to fight there’s nothing to fight for. Everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerrilla.
The central ‘guerrilla’ in Guerrillas is based on ‘Michael X’, self-named in imitation of the American Malcolm X. He was born Michael de Freitas, of mixed race, in Trinidad (Naipaul was born there a few months earlier). The son of a Portuguese father, he could had he wished have ‘passed’ for white. He chose, instead, to embrace a black Muslim identity; another of his self-awarded names was ‘Abdul Malik’. Before he became political, de Freitas worked in London as a thug enforcer for the crook/property tycoon, Peter Rachman – linked through Rachman’s mistress, Mandy Rice-Davies, to the Profumo scandal. After being ‘radicalised’, he attracted publicity as an evangelist for Black Power and Black Pride. Having fleeced various rich bien-pensant dupes in the UK (John Lennon, famously), and falling foul of the law, Michael X fled back to Trinidad as a self-declared revolutionary leader. Among the ‘commune’ he set up there was an English convert, Gale Benson, the daughter of a Tory MP. She was killed – hacked to death like a side of beef. De Freitas was convicted of murder and hanged in 1975.
A fascinated Naipaul wrote a long essay on the subject, ‘Michael X and the Black Power Killings in Trinidad’ (1979), and a fictional version of de Freitas appears as the central character, Jimmy Ahmed, in Guerrillas. The novel complicates things well beyond the strict historical record. The action is set on an unnamed West Indian island, manifestly Trinidad, polluted – atmospherically and socially – by a multinational bauxite mining company. The three principals are: a white South African intellectual, Peter Roche, exiled for his Black Liberation sympathies; his mistress, an upper-class white woman, Jane; and Jimmy Ahmed, on the run from the UK, where he is wanted for rape. Ahmed has a ‘catamite’, one of the many boys he keeps, as a kind of posse, on his farm. He also, when he feels the need, borrows Jane from the complaisant Roche, who sees it as furthering the revolution. The multinational finances Ahmed with bribes – as insurance, in case he really does trigger a popular uprising and take things over.
The title – Guerrillas – is ironic: these are not freedom fighters, they are degenerates. The irony permeating the whole novel is implicit in the first sentence: ‘After lunch Jane and Roche left their house on the Ridge to drive to Thrushcross Grange.’ The allusions are mischievously obvious. Jane [Eyre] and Roche[ster] leave for the house which represents civilisation (as opposed to the savagery of Heathcliff’s house) in Wuthering Heights. The first Mrs Rochester, we recall, originated in the West Indies. Unlike Charlotte Brontë’s Jane, Naipaul’s will end up raped by her super-potent black lover and murdered by his accomplice. Everything, every value – moral, spiritual, ideological – is decayed. Naipaul contrives a landscape which breathes irremediable corruption:
The cleared land had been ridged and furrowed from end to end. The furrows were full of shiny green weeds; and the ridges, one or two of which showed haphazard, failed planting, were light brown and looked as dry as bone.
Looking at it through the car window, Jane says: ‘I used to think that England was in a state of decay.’ Roche replies, ironically, ‘Decayed from what?’
The narrative is laced with ineffable contempt for the author’s birthplace and what, after independence, it has more or less become. The plot follows the Michael X story, but with the difference that (having murdered his male lover) Jimmy goes on the run and escapes the rope. Roche leaves for a safer part of the world in which to play at guerrillas. The novel ends with Roche phoning Jimmy, warning him to keep his head down. God help the world if Naipaul’s world-view is accurate.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 12, 2018
No reviews in two years and now two in one day. Well, that’s what a New Year’s Reolutions and cross country flights will do for you. This time the book is much more serious - V.S. Naipaul’s tale about a Caribbean uprising - told from the triangular point of view of a middle class, boorish/bores British woman, South African former Apartheid martyr, and half Chinese / half Black-Caribbean revolutionary.
This is my first read of Naipaul and he strikes me - in terms f first impressions - as vaguely like Hawethorne though they may simply be a matter of setting and British sensibilities. Let’s start with perspective. I found the alternating perspectives an interesting way to view what might otherwise be considered a dreadful fully slow story. There’s tension and drama, but not much happens; at least to the main characters. With the exception of a brief and thoroughly unsatisfy triage between Jimmy and Jane, the action happens around the characters, but never too them.
Instead we have tension created through dialogue. Frantic phone calls speculating what might occur during the rebellion. A tense interview in a radio studio where the air conditioning may or may not have been deliberately disabled. (Don’t laugh - the air conditioner is single-handedly responsible for the resurgence of the South - imagine what the tropics must have been like without it. Back to my train of thought.)
Looking back, those two scenes stand out the most - with Meridith’s “game” at Harry’s beach house providing a close third. My favorite events, then all focused around dialogue driven by other characters. Peter’s conversations with Mrs. Stephens falls into this same category. Everything is driven by external forces.
And for three characters who all - at one point or another at least - see themselves and each other as doers - it is brilliant writing to have the primary action driven by secondary characters. It mirrors this triumvirates revelations that they are not, as they had presupposed, “doers” but rather at the mercies of the world in which they inhabit. A symmetry of plot and form and to my untrained eye a subtle one at that.
Of course, as the novel winds down - the last 20 pages or so - the three protoganists all decide that they will do something. Jane determines that she will see if there is anything she can do for Jimmy’s children in England. Peter determines that will take action to save Jimmy from the fate the world has thrust upon him. And Jimmy, well for those who haven’t read it yet, let’s just say he takes matters into his own hands. And for three characters who spend the novel ranking of themselves as “doers” without doing anything, when they finally take action, the results are tragic. What does that say about our ability to shape the world?
For my first foray into Naipaul I find that attractive. Combine with his rather terse, Hemmingway-esque syntax I think I have found a new author to add to my shelves.
This is my first read of Naipaul and he strikes me - in terms f first impressions - as vaguely like Hawethorne though they may simply be a matter of setting and British sensibilities. Let’s start with perspective. I found the alternating perspectives an interesting way to view what might otherwise be considered a dreadful fully slow story. There’s tension and drama, but not much happens; at least to the main characters. With the exception of a brief and thoroughly unsatisfy triage between Jimmy and Jane, the action happens around the characters, but never too them.
Instead we have tension created through dialogue. Frantic phone calls speculating what might occur during the rebellion. A tense interview in a radio studio where the air conditioning may or may not have been deliberately disabled. (Don’t laugh - the air conditioner is single-handedly responsible for the resurgence of the South - imagine what the tropics must have been like without it. Back to my train of thought.)
Looking back, those two scenes stand out the most - with Meridith’s “game” at Harry’s beach house providing a close third. My favorite events, then all focused around dialogue driven by other characters. Peter’s conversations with Mrs. Stephens falls into this same category. Everything is driven by external forces.
And for three characters who all - at one point or another at least - see themselves and each other as doers - it is brilliant writing to have the primary action driven by secondary characters. It mirrors this triumvirates revelations that they are not, as they had presupposed, “doers” but rather at the mercies of the world in which they inhabit. A symmetry of plot and form and to my untrained eye a subtle one at that.
Of course, as the novel winds down - the last 20 pages or so - the three protoganists all decide that they will do something. Jane determines that she will see if there is anything she can do for Jimmy’s children in England. Peter determines that will take action to save Jimmy from the fate the world has thrust upon him. And Jimmy, well for those who haven’t read it yet, let’s just say he takes matters into his own hands. And for three characters who spend the novel ranking of themselves as “doers” without doing anything, when they finally take action, the results are tragic. What does that say about our ability to shape the world?
For my first foray into Naipaul I find that attractive. Combine with his rather terse, Hemmingway-esque syntax I think I have found a new author to add to my shelves.
December 17, 2019
This novel left a bad taste in my mouth with its unappealing, nay awful characters, ambiguity about what people were thinking and doing and, of course, the appalling and unappetising description of revenge sex and rape. I know I’ve led a sheltered life, but is spitting in someone’s mouth considered sexy in some circles? If you think it is, please do not enlighten me! If Naipaul thought it was necessary to include in a scene that was already a rape scene, why did he feel the need to include that particular sordid detail? This book reminded me of Forster’s A Passage to India with its clash of cultures, background of political upheaval and a naive young Englishwoman causing trouble for a local, though unlike Aziz in A Passage to India, Jimmy is already on the road to destruction. By the way, I didn’t like A Passage to India, either.
Interesting fact: This book is based on a true case of a cult leader Michael X. and a young English socialite, Gale Benson, who was murdered at a commune in Trinidad run by the son of a Caribbean black woman and a ‘Portuguese’ man who was brought up to pass as white, but later embraced the Black Power movement, starting a London commune named the Black House, widely supported by left-wing celebrities including John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Criminal activities prompted his flight to Trinidad, where he started another commune. He met Gale Benson due to his cousin, Hakim Jamal, an attractive and charismatic African American who had relationships with Gale Benson, the editor Diana Athill and the actress Jean Seberg, as well as spending time feting celebrities in Hollywood. Diana Athill edited his autobiography, From the Dead Level: Malcolm X and Me, then wrote her own take on the case in her own book Make Believe: A True Story. She also edited Naipaul’s version, Guerrillas; he also wrote a more factual essay about the case. The case is also referred to in the films The Bank Job (2008) and Seberg (2019). It must have been a high profile, notorious case at the time.
Only plus point: good descriptions of scenery.
Recommended to: only masochists and Naipaul completists.
Interesting fact: This book is based on a true case of a cult leader Michael X. and a young English socialite, Gale Benson, who was murdered at a commune in Trinidad run by the son of a Caribbean black woman and a ‘Portuguese’ man who was brought up to pass as white, but later embraced the Black Power movement, starting a London commune named the Black House, widely supported by left-wing celebrities including John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Criminal activities prompted his flight to Trinidad, where he started another commune. He met Gale Benson due to his cousin, Hakim Jamal, an attractive and charismatic African American who had relationships with Gale Benson, the editor Diana Athill and the actress Jean Seberg, as well as spending time feting celebrities in Hollywood. Diana Athill edited his autobiography, From the Dead Level: Malcolm X and Me, then wrote her own take on the case in her own book Make Believe: A True Story. She also edited Naipaul’s version, Guerrillas; he also wrote a more factual essay about the case. The case is also referred to in the films The Bank Job (2008) and Seberg (2019). It must have been a high profile, notorious case at the time.
Only plus point: good descriptions of scenery.
Recommended to: only masochists and Naipaul completists.
July 20, 2017
I found myself overwhelmingly disappointed, having expected more considering the amount of acclaim I've seen this work receive. I haven't been as bored reading a novel in quite a while. This must be the record for the number of times I've fallen asleep reading a single book.
Although the title might evoke images of war and violence, there is very little action taking place in the story. The book consists primarily of descriptions of setting and prolonged character exposition. None the characters were interesting to me and the descriptions seemed fortuitous, detailed though they may be.
The writing seemed off a times too. It's not easy to place my finger on exactly why, but some of the phrases struck me as confusing, and often found my self scratching my head and rereading sentences. Here's an example:
"It was what he had taught her, what she had picked up from him and incorporated, as words, as passing attitude, into the chaos of words and attitudes she possessed: words that she might shed at any time as easily as she had picked them up, and forget she had ever spoken them, she who had once been married to a young politician and had without effort incarnated an ordinary correctness, and who might easily return to such a role. She was without memory: Roche had decided that some time ago. She was without consistency or even coherence. She knew only what she was and what she had been born to; to this knowledge she was tethered; it was her stability, enabling her to adventure in security. Adventuring, she was indifferent, perhaps blind, to the contradiction between what she said and what she was so secure of being; and this indifference or blindness, this absence of the sense of the absurd, was part of her unavailability."
Tell me if you can make heads or tails of that.
Also, Naipaul doesn't appear to understand how to punctuate properly.
I will admit, the way Jimmy wrote about himself in letters from the perspective of other characters, (the writer, writing about a person writing about himself from another person's point-of-view), though confusing at first, was creative and interesting. Kudos for that.
Although the title might evoke images of war and violence, there is very little action taking place in the story. The book consists primarily of descriptions of setting and prolonged character exposition. None the characters were interesting to me and the descriptions seemed fortuitous, detailed though they may be.
The writing seemed off a times too. It's not easy to place my finger on exactly why, but some of the phrases struck me as confusing, and often found my self scratching my head and rereading sentences. Here's an example:
"It was what he had taught her, what she had picked up from him and incorporated, as words, as passing attitude, into the chaos of words and attitudes she possessed: words that she might shed at any time as easily as she had picked them up, and forget she had ever spoken them, she who had once been married to a young politician and had without effort incarnated an ordinary correctness, and who might easily return to such a role. She was without memory: Roche had decided that some time ago. She was without consistency or even coherence. She knew only what she was and what she had been born to; to this knowledge she was tethered; it was her stability, enabling her to adventure in security. Adventuring, she was indifferent, perhaps blind, to the contradiction between what she said and what she was so secure of being; and this indifference or blindness, this absence of the sense of the absurd, was part of her unavailability."
Tell me if you can make heads or tails of that.
Also, Naipaul doesn't appear to understand how to punctuate properly.
I will admit, the way Jimmy wrote about himself in letters from the perspective of other characters, (the writer, writing about a person writing about himself from another person's point-of-view), though confusing at first, was creative and interesting. Kudos for that.
January 4, 2022
SUMMARY - My empathy instinct was tested to breaking point in a humourless but thoughtful deciolonialist Trinidadian murder mystery, with a focus on race relations.
This is a suspenseful and bleak novel, where a humid haziness hangs above the action that leads up to a murder. We know from the start that this is a serious-minded whodunnit, set in a scorched, sweat-clinging island a long way from holiday brochures of the Caribbean. You feel this might not just be Trinidad; this could be any country staggering restlessly under weak rule, and where anarchism openly harries from the shadows.
The unremittingly oppressive undercurrent of violence wasn't entirely to my taste, but then I also appreciate reading widely. Guerrillas certainly took me a little outside my comfort zone, not because the action was especially graphic; it is largely suggested, and perhaps all the more shocking for it. Instead, the novel tested my empathy for Jane in particular, who like Lise in Muriel Spark's 1970 novel 'The Driver's Seat', seems to be openly courting her own death. Unlike 'The Driver's Seat', however, there were no lighter moments as such, just arguments, ultimatums, blank sexual encounters and a weighty waiting for a crisis to actually occur.
Spark suffused her novels with a jet black humour, but Naipaul is deadly serious. I found it harder to engage with Jane in Nailpaul's work than Lise in Spark's. I actually found myself taking the murderer's side, which for all Naipaul's ambivalence for western liberalism (so I understand from a skim reading of others), does still seem to be unfortunate. Spark's playfulness on the question of freedom to choose made the act of death a philosophical question. In Naipaul's novel it never left the narrative runway, and it was both grim and a blessed relief when it came to happen.
In other respects, although I didn't massively enjoy Guerrillas, I did appreciate its handling of inter-racial conflict, and in particular how even the most well-meaning white men remain outsiders, or bystanders at best, in domestic political struggle. Roche (emigre from torture in apartheid South Africa) loses Jane in several respects, as she gets slaughtered on the crucible. Personally too, Roche never manages to do more than walk through the spaces that Jimmy ambivalently menaces, while his hilltop home and ready access to a passport sets him apart from the necessity of action.
This is a suspenseful and bleak novel, where a humid haziness hangs above the action that leads up to a murder. We know from the start that this is a serious-minded whodunnit, set in a scorched, sweat-clinging island a long way from holiday brochures of the Caribbean. You feel this might not just be Trinidad; this could be any country staggering restlessly under weak rule, and where anarchism openly harries from the shadows.
The unremittingly oppressive undercurrent of violence wasn't entirely to my taste, but then I also appreciate reading widely. Guerrillas certainly took me a little outside my comfort zone, not because the action was especially graphic; it is largely suggested, and perhaps all the more shocking for it. Instead, the novel tested my empathy for Jane in particular, who like Lise in Muriel Spark's 1970 novel 'The Driver's Seat', seems to be openly courting her own death. Unlike 'The Driver's Seat', however, there were no lighter moments as such, just arguments, ultimatums, blank sexual encounters and a weighty waiting for a crisis to actually occur.
Spark suffused her novels with a jet black humour, but Naipaul is deadly serious. I found it harder to engage with Jane in Nailpaul's work than Lise in Spark's. I actually found myself taking the murderer's side, which for all Naipaul's ambivalence for western liberalism (so I understand from a skim reading of others), does still seem to be unfortunate. Spark's playfulness on the question of freedom to choose made the act of death a philosophical question. In Naipaul's novel it never left the narrative runway, and it was both grim and a blessed relief when it came to happen.
In other respects, although I didn't massively enjoy Guerrillas, I did appreciate its handling of inter-racial conflict, and in particular how even the most well-meaning white men remain outsiders, or bystanders at best, in domestic political struggle. Roche (emigre from torture in apartheid South Africa) loses Jane in several respects, as she gets slaughtered on the crucible. Personally too, Roche never manages to do more than walk through the spaces that Jimmy ambivalently menaces, while his hilltop home and ready access to a passport sets him apart from the necessity of action.
May 21, 2022
V. S. Naipaul said that women's writing was 'feminine tosh.' I'm a female writer so I didn't take too kindly to that. As a result, 'Guerrillas' is the first Naipaul book I've read. I cringe a little when I say that... yes, it was well-written. His writing in this book is elegant, self-assured, well-paced. He creates a believable sense of place. For these reasons I would definitely recommend the book.
I did spot a few oddities which, if I had been his editor, I would have cautiously drawn his attention to. Multiple times he makes reference to his character Harry's 'big white canvas shoes.' He also has favourite words that he loves to repeat: 'crisscrossing' is one of these. (See Ben Blatt's book 'Nabokov's Favourite Word Is Mauve' for more about how novelists cannot resist reusing some words over and over.)
A trigger warning about 'Guerrillas:' It contains one very violent and disturbing sex scene. Few professional reviewers have mentioned this. Perhaps they considered that it was of minor importance in relation to the weighty themes of the book as a whole. 'Guerillas' was first published in 1975. Times and opinions change. That episode in the book may hold an altogether different significance for today's post #MeToo female readers.
I did spot a few oddities which, if I had been his editor, I would have cautiously drawn his attention to. Multiple times he makes reference to his character Harry's 'big white canvas shoes.' He also has favourite words that he loves to repeat: 'crisscrossing' is one of these. (See Ben Blatt's book 'Nabokov's Favourite Word Is Mauve' for more about how novelists cannot resist reusing some words over and over.)
A trigger warning about 'Guerrillas:' It contains one very violent and disturbing sex scene. Few professional reviewers have mentioned this. Perhaps they considered that it was of minor importance in relation to the weighty themes of the book as a whole. 'Guerillas' was first published in 1975. Times and opinions change. That episode in the book may hold an altogether different significance for today's post #MeToo female readers.
October 9, 2023
Not a fun read, this. Best appreciated in tandem with the long essay published in the anthology A Writer in the World, earlier in the shorter collection titled The Return of Eva Peron + the Killings in Trinidad. The latter provides the true story inspiring the fiction. Nobody comes out well. The Graham Greene-sian setting, the moral lacking of its characters, and the oppressive tropical torpor all weigh the pace down, as Naipual doubtless intended. One can see this in the care taken with many passages. On a technical level, there's much to admire in the craft. Even if the saga's sullen.
What's ironic is that the titular insurgents barely number two. Instead of one seeing them in action, we view their havoc and blowback from the perspective of the Canadian-English woman and South African man through which much of the tale is told in indirect first-person tone. And the italics that the chief purported Liberator of His People imagines his version of the events makes for a clever way to broaden the perspectives. However, one gets the sense, again doubtless meant to be such, that the detachment shared by all the protagonists-antagonists, for each contends against the other two, that Naipaul carries such a jaundiced attitude towards his homeland that he himself seems burdened by having to take the trouble to dramatize the sordid events of the real-life "Michael X."
What's ironic is that the titular insurgents barely number two. Instead of one seeing them in action, we view their havoc and blowback from the perspective of the Canadian-English woman and South African man through which much of the tale is told in indirect first-person tone. And the italics that the chief purported Liberator of His People imagines his version of the events makes for a clever way to broaden the perspectives. However, one gets the sense, again doubtless meant to be such, that the detachment shared by all the protagonists-antagonists, for each contends against the other two, that Naipaul carries such a jaundiced attitude towards his homeland that he himself seems burdened by having to take the trouble to dramatize the sordid events of the real-life "Michael X."
Displaying 1 - 30 of 130 reviews