Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories And Pieces (Abacus Books) - Softcover

Naipaul, Shiva

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0349124930 ISBN 13: 9780349124933

Publisher: Penguin, 1988

Synopsis

A TRINIDAD CHILDHOOD about the writer's youth in Trinidad in the West Indies. He is of Indian ancestry-a Hindu. He begins by recalling his second year at Oxford, 1966. He tells how severely shocked he was by the sudden death of a fellow-studen, also a Hindu from Trinidad. Two years before at 18, the writer had sailed out of Port of Spain harbor, after a youth dominated and darkened by the narrow pursuit of examination success. Those who weren't rich or "white" had to be bright. His goal was to become the winner of one of four Island Scholarships based on the results of the Cambridge Advanced Level examinations that were awarded each year by the Trinidad govt. The island offered no higher reward, nor greater accolade than these. He tells about his rigorous academic training from about age 8 onward & how it poisoned all joy. Of Trinidad he says that today after a generation of "development" it is neither the industrailized country it wanted to be nor the agricultural country it once was. It drifts toward disaster on a tinselly tide of imports. His family wanted him to study medicine but he fled to the humanities. Wrriter describes, how it feels to inherit no culture and have to re-invent himself every day. He tells about his family and about St. James, the district of Port of Spain where he grew up. It was a place of turbulent cosmopolitanism. He tells about the seedy lives of some of their neighbors. His father died at age 49 when he was 7. He refers often to his rather genteel mother. He ends telling that he lived with his wife in London after completing his university studies.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0349124930
• ISBN 13: 9780349124933
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 432