Guerrillas

Set on a troubled Caribbean island where Asians, Africans, Americans and former British colonials co-exist in a state of suppressed hysteria V. S. Naipaul's Guerrillas is a novel of colonialism and revolution. A white man arrives with his mistress, an Englishwoman influenced by fantasies of native power and sexuality, unaware of the consequences of her actions. Together with a leader of the revolution, they act out a gripping drama of death, sexual violence and spiritual impotence. Guerrillas depicts a convulsion in public life, and ends in private violence. The novel comes with extraordinary force from the centre of a profound moral awareness of the worlds plight. Impeccable . . . Guerrillas seems to me Naipauls Heart of Darkness: a brilliant artists anatomy of emptiness, and of despair Observer