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V. S. Naipaul
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Guerrillas MP3 CD – Unabridged, October 16, 2018

by V S Naipaul (Author), Ron Butler (Reader)
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 61 ratings
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On an unnamed Caribbean Island, political tensions provoked by race and poverty are high. Jimmy Ahmed, a young mixed-race man, has been hailed as a revolutionary leader of the people. Roche, imprisoned for activities against South Africa's apartheid regime, and Jane, a feckless English rich girl wanting to feel a part of something bigger, get sucked into the turmoil and world of Ahmed. But does anyone achieve anything by causing unrest? Do any of them really want freedom in a new society or just the old society with themselves at the helm of power?

Written in the politically turbulent 1970s, Guerrillas takes aim at the sacred cows and myths of revolutionaries-how so many of them huff and puff, knowing that the house will never blow down. From the safest places come the bravest words.

Naipaul's bleak tale also takes aim at flaws in Marxist and revolutionary ideology-at the idea that one can predict or manipulate how the revolution will turn out. His characters are lost souls trying to navigate a postcolonial world where racism, classism, and conflicting ideals create a festering unrest that no one knows how to fix.

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  1. Language
    English
  2. Publisher
    Blackstone Publishing
  3. Publication date
    October 16, 2018
  4. Dimensions
    5.3 x 0.3 x 6.7 inches
  5. ISBN-10
    1538555123
  6. ISBN-13
    978-1538555125
  7. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Impeccable prose, precise, austere, modulating always from place to people to dialogue with a fastidious reserve...A brilliant artist's anatomy of emptiness, and of despair.

-- "Observer (London)"

V. S. Naipaul...brings an uncompromising intelligence to a unique perspective on the world at large, as it is seen by the multiracial, multicultural children of Empire who as a consequence of their mixed heritage, are political orphans in perpetual exile. Guerrillas, half dream and half news story, outlines the ugly cracks in the ideological jigsaw of a Caribbean island just next door to Naipaul's native Trinidad-a state where 'everybody wants to fight his own little war, everybody is a guerrilla'..No easy answers for Naipaul: just 'hints of the failure and shoddiness to come.'

-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Blackstone Publishing; Unabridged edition (October 16, 2018)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1538555123
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1538555125
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.3 x 0.3 x 6.7 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 61 ratings

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V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
61 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Oddysseus
5.0 out of 5 stars outstanding
Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2023
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Possibly the greatest writer of the last hundred years. You may not like the man, but the writer is truly extraordinary.
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kinopku
4.0 out of 5 stars not his best, but...
Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2009
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i can admit that this is not naipaul's best work, but it is still a very good read. the book thrives on tension, of creating a feeling of decadence and an oncoming threat seen in every detail from the landscape to the people. reading this book will certainly make you want to read up on the current politics of a place before visiting it.

i was not thrilled with the ending. i had been happy to read about the *threat* of violence and the deliverance on that threat was in a way anticlimactic. not that i am averse to violence in general, but i felt that the character had had her comeuppance, or could have had it in another way - although i guess part of the whole ethos of guerilla warfare and revolutions in general is that some people just wont listen if you are peaceful.

definitely read this book. it takes a look at the role of the middle class supposed sympathizers in the face of revolt.
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JAK
3.0 out of 5 stars Carribbean Dystopia
Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2018
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I think it's helpful to recognize that this is a very unpleasant book.It has a dank , claustrophobic feel to it.Everyone in it is unlikable and nothing good happens.There's a back story.Peter is a white South African refugee who was an anti apartheid activist , maybe even terrorist who was imprisoned , tortured and allowed to go to England where he meets Jane.He and Jane both move to an unamed Caribbean island where Peter has a job doing I'm not quite sure what.The island seems modeled after Trinidad with a small dollop of Guyana thrown in.There they become inolved with Jimmy Ahmed, who is half black and half chinese and very strange.In England , he reinvented himself as a Black Messiah and a Muslim.He is deported from England and back on the island he becomes leader of a commune that doesn't really do much.

It is a well written book and a generally compelling read.I did have to ask the question , what does it all amount too? Well ,I'm not altogether sure.Naipaul is obviously out to puncture third world fantasies and even more the fantasies of Western third world romantisizers(sp?).He does a pretty good job with that.The world depicted is awful and squalid.Everyone in the book is pretty awful.It's definitely not his best book. A HOUSE FOR MR.BISWAS , for example , is greatly superior.The later Naipaul may be more interesting as an essayist than as a novelist.However, I don't wish to imply this is a bad book .It borders on being quite good.But it lacks something , a certain spark of life.
5 people found this helpful
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Jack M Englebrecht
5.0 out of 5 stars Found what was lost
Reviewed in the United States on July 12, 2019
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I have been looking for this book to replace one I lost - perfect
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5.0 out of 5 stars Great!
Reviewed in the United States on June 18, 2017
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Wonderful. Reminding me of black racism.
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dmiguer
4.0 out of 5 stars The Remains of Empire
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2021
"I loathe all of these people. I hate this place."
-A South African civil rights advocate in 'Guerrillas'

This 1975 novel by V S Naipaul was informed by his 1972 article about black activist Michael X who had committed grisly murders in Trinidad, the author's birth country. 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". The 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 that 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, with both attracted to Jane. Each are flawed. Jimmy has delusions he is a savior to the locals and Roche enjoys his status over them. Jane imitates various belief systems she picked up from others.

Jane stays at 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 UK to escape the 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 and order is restored to 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 can claim to present events in a unbiased fashion. Reading 'The Killings in Trinidad' was a useful guide to look into his thought process. The bitterness and disillusion of natives and colonials is reflected well in this story. Since he 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 a good work but relentlessly dark and grim.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Christian Runkel
5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic
Reviewed in Germany on December 2, 2022
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Naipaul at his best.
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Trevor Coote
4.0 out of 5 stars The author's home ground: exile, and post-independence betrayal and decay
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 25, 2008
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Despite his well-documented irascibility and his unique ability to give offence to every community about whom he writes, V S Naipaul remains the finest living exponent of impeccable, clear, deceptively simple English prose. In Guerillas his characteristic disdain for black and white alike (and, despite what his critics say, Indian too, but not here) is again evident, but as ever is fully qualified (and almost justified) by their self-seeking actions and behaviour. Nobody describes better the post-independence decay of ex-colonies better than Naipaul: `The sea, when they came to it, gave no feeling of air and lightness: the fine red powder of bauxite, sheds of corroded corrugated iron, the reek of the burning rubbish dump: everything here, hillside, forest, sea, mangrove, turned to slum'. However, it is not just physical decay but ideological and moral.
A petty anti-apartheid activist arrives on an unstable and unruly Caribbean island (despite the decoys Trinidad in all but name) where injustice and poverty abound and revolution simmers, though nobody has a coherent post-revolution strategy. Lacking understanding of the country and unsure of what role he will play there, he brings his lover who becomes transfixed by wannabe revolutionary Jimmy Ahmed, a half-black son of a Chinese grocer, who dreams of an agrarian revolution. Their presence stirs up a hornet's nest in a community already racked by suspicion, resentment and paranoia and ultimately ends in tragedy. But it is not really a story about personalities (never Naipaul's strong point); it is about a country still controlled by colonial and foreign interests but too divided, too corrupt and unstructured to bring about change and build a successful new post-independence country.
A fine book, if somewhat dated now, but not the author at his best.
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August Party
4.0 out of 5 stars 異様なゲリラ！
Reviewed in Japan on January 17, 2009
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　『ゲリラ』は、『自由の国』の次なる創作として1975年に出版された。まず、題名のゲリラだけれども、この本のゲリラとは、ゲバラの『日記』におけるゲリラではまったくなく、また、ナイポールの『魔法の種』において主人公が身を投じたゲリラとも無縁だ。何に近いかと言うと、『エヴァ・ペロンの帰還』に納められている“トリニダットにおける殺人”に雰囲気が似ている、と僕は思う。

　ロッチは、南アフリカにおける反体制活動家で、投獄・拷問にも耐えたヒーローだ。彼は次なる活動の場としてカリブ海に浮かぶこの島にやってくる。彼のあとを追って恋人のジェーンもこの島に着く。彼らが、この島に着いてまずゲリラ活動の拠点とおぼしき農場を訪ねるシーンから、この小説の異様さが際立ってくる。戦士でもあるかも知れない若い男たちは、虚ろにベッドに横たわっていてそのうちの一人、弁髪風の髪形をした少年は、ジェーンを認めると一ドルを恵んでくれという。宿舎は不潔で乱雑であり、ジェーンは自分がこの島に来たのは間違いだったのではないかと思う。ロッチは、新聞やラジオがゲリラの活動をいろいろ報道しているのはヒステリックな妄想で、騒ぎを起こしているのはギャングに過ぎないと直感する。

この小説で僕が非常に気になるのは、ナイポールがロッチの恋人ジェーンを意地悪なくらいに悪し様に書いていることだ。彼女は、英国を腐っている、と言う。腐っていたとしても自分たちが安全でいられることに彼女が鈍感過ぎるとナイポールは考える。そして彼女の冒険心を、恵まれた者の特権としてしか認めない。彼女はハジであり中国系ブラックであるゲリラのリーダとみずから肉体関係をもつようになるが、ナイポールの彼女への筆致は、徹底的な侮蔑に満ちているのだ。・・・僕は、思うのだが、総じてナイポール文学の根底に、白人中産階級への軽蔑、あるいは差別感覚を読み取るのは僕だけだろうか。厄介なのは、ナイポールの差別感覚が僕らにとってかなりリアリティがあり、またおおきな魅力でもあることだ。
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