The late Edward Said accused him of ‘an intellectual catastrophe’, promoting ‘colonial mythologies about wogs and darkies’. To the poet and fellow Caribbean Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott, he is ‘VS Nightfall’. Walcott has noted: ‘If Naipaul’s attitude toward negroes, with its nasty little sneers… was turned on Jews, for example, how many people would praise him for his frankness?‘
Yeh, him.
See the full praise poem here.
Clearly, the man is not a particularly nice human being, but certainly one of the finest writers in the English language.
Oh Leo Africanus, I get so vexed by Naipaul. But like Steve above, his writing is very fine. I stand guilty. Forgive me.