Home and Identity at Crossroads: A Selective Study of V. S. Naipaul’s Narratives in Postcolonial Perspective

V. S. Naipaul is a prominent postcolonial writer and a Nobel Laureate. He was born in Trinidad in a family of Indian descent as his grandparents migrated from India to British Trinidad in the late nineteenth century as indentured labourers. Like other expatriate writers, Naipaul too can be put in the category of a cultural traveller or an extra-territorial man bearing transnational identities. Most migrant writers including V. S. Naipaul and as a part of their self-exile, have settled in metropolitan centres of the world in order to attract Western audience. The homeless and unsettled life of his father had great impact on young Naipaul. As they were settling in the New World, they constantly struggled to maintain their cultural, religious and linguistic identity. Thus, migration brought in them a sense of alienation and homelessness and an identity that remained a prime concern for V. S. Naipaul throughout his life and which is reflected in most of his writings. This write-up aims to analyse V. S. Naipaul’s select narratives to showcase the migrants’ including the postcolonial peoples’ search and at times crises for home and identity.