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Research on V S Naipaul can be accessed formally - through library membership - and informally through Google and other search engines. The research from both kinds of search has been organised by literary text in chronological order in this database, which is in many ways a contemporary version of the old fashioned bibliographies we used to produce in literary studies. Each is encompassed in a brief introduction. For ease of reference, we have subdivided the studies: From 1957 to 2001; and 2001 to the Present. V S Naipaul’s winning of the Nobel Prize in 2001 triggered a new wave of criticism in which almost every critic who had written about him earlier reprised his/her assessment about the writer. Such a division therefore also provides insight into the classic nature of Naipaul’s writings that has sustained interest and readership through the years.
 
 
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    THE MYSTIC MASSEUR

    1957

    THE MYSTIC MASSEUR, THE FIRST NOVEL WRITTEN BY V S NAIPAUL, is perhaps his most well-known especially since it was scripted by another great writer Caryl Phillips for translation into a Merchant-Ivory film of the same name.

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    MIGUEL STREET

    1959

    Miguel Street was first published in 1959, two years after it was first offered for publication, since it was the first book that V S Naipaul wrote. A great deal of criticism has been produced about it, including a quite recent one written by Malaysian literary critics who may experience difficulty with the English language as well as the varied contexts out of which V S Naipaul writes.

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    THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

    1962

    The Middle Passage remains one of V S Naipaul’s most controversial texts. This article by Shizen Ozawa claims in fact that with this book V S Naipaul became a “controversial chronicler of chaotic postcolonial conditions.

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    AN AREA OF DARKNESS

    1964

    V S Naipaul’s An Area of Darkness is the first of three books he wrote about his travels in India and it has generated a lot OF DEBATE, ESPECIALLY AMONG INDIANS. A 2014 ARTICLE IN THE JOURNAL RESEARCH INNOVATOR for example firmly places V.S. NAIPAUL as an ‘outsider’ who lacks essential skills for analysing Indian affairs.

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    THE MIMIC MEN

    1967

    Theses have proliferated about all of V S Naipaul’s works but The Mimic Men has generated the bulk. “Manifestations of Colonization in V S Naipaul’s The Mimic Men by ه ار روا ل " ا" Shayma Mohammad Mahmoud is a very recent one that makes for interesting reading.

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    IN A FREE STATE

    1971

    In A Free State has proven to be another book to which readers respond viscerally as can be seen in this essay. It is his representations of Africa in the final story that draw the most ire. Interestingly such responses have not been generated by critics from the African continent as illustrated by this column in a Rwandan daily shows.

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    GUERRILLAS

    1975

    At this midpoint in the 1970s, approximately twenty years after graduating from Oxford, V S Naipaul’s vision of the postcolonial world began to grow darker than most people could digest.

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    THE SUFFRAGE OF ELVIRA

    1958

    THE WORK DONE ON THE SUFFRAGE OF ELVIRA has been less than that on the other books in single book studies. It is more often found in studies that are about this book in comparison to many others. The few exceptions include an essay done by K. Ramajeyalakshmi which declares itself A POSTCOLONIAL STUDY OF THE SUFFRAGE OF ELVIRA.

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    A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS

    1961

    Kumar Parag’s essay gives a postcolonial analysis of A House For Mr. Biswas while commenting on V S Naipaul himself as a “product of post-imperialist society.”

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    MR STONE AND THE KNIGHTS COMPANION

    1963

    Mr Stone and the Knights Companion is one of the few in which V S Naipaul set the action of his story in Britain but it is not a novel to which critics used to pay a great deal of attention.

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    A FLAG ON THE ISLAND

    1967

    The book that followed An Area of Darkness is A Flag on the Island. Sudha Rai in her essay, “Postcolonial Parables of Survival: V S Naipaul’s A Flag on the Island” views the short stories, “My Aunt Gold-Teeth” and “Raffle” as examples of traditional writing situated by plot, dialogue and external detail

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    THE LOSS OF EL DORADO

    1969

    This text has generated the most discussion within the Caribbean for having provided a history to the inheritors of the vanquished, the enslaved and the indentured. Sandra Pouchet Paquet’s essay “V S Naipaul and the Interior Expeditions: ‘It is Impossible to Make a Step without the Indians” argues that Naipaul ...

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    THE OVERCROWDED BARRACOON

    1972

    This is another one of V S Naipaul’s works that has not been given a great deal of singular attention except and in so far as it caused offence such as in the case of this student who looks at the leap Mauritius experienced between the time of V S Naipaul’s writing and today. There is of course also the occasional review that appeared soon after the book was published.

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    INDIA: A WOUNDED CIVILIZATION

    1976

    India: A Wounded Civilization and the other books in what have come to be called the India trilogy have been received with some consternation and some articles are as concerned with his representation of Islam in India as they are with those in the books about Islamic conversion elsewhere.