Mimic Men [Mass Market Paperback]

V. S. Naipaul (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1992

Just 40, Ralph Singh - a disgraced colonial minister exiled from Isabella, the Caribbean island of his birth - writes his autobiography in a genteel hotel in a run-down London suburb. The author also wrote "The Mystic Masseur", "A House for Mr Biswas" and "The Middle Passage".

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A Tolstoyan spirit.... The so-called Third World has produced no more brilliant literary artist.”–John Updike, The New Yorker

“Ambitious and successful.”–The Times (London) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Inside Flap

A profound novel of cultural displacement, The Mimic Men masterfully evokes a colonial man's experience in a postcolonial world.

Born of Indian heritage and raised on a British-dependent Caribbean island, Ralph Singh has retired to suburban London, writing his memoirs as a means to impose order on a chaotic existence. His memories lead him to recognize the paradox of his childhood during which he secretly fantasized about a heroic India, yet changed his name from Ranjit Kripalsingh. As he assesses his short-lived marriage to an ostentatious white woman, Singh realizes what has kept him from becoming a proper Englishman. But it is the return home and his subsequent immersion in the roiling political atmosphere of a newly self-governed nation that ultimately provide Singh with the necessary insight to discover the crux of his disillusionment. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (July 1, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140029400
• ISBN-13: 978-0140029406
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,794,475 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Elegant prose but not involving, February 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mimic Men (Mass Market Paperback)

The story is set on a fictional Caribbean isle and has to do with the displacement of a British Indian who is in search of his cultural and spiritual identity. The inner angst resulting from the end of British colonialism and its aftermath are explored here in elegant, poetic prose. But it's hard to relate to a self-pitying main character who visits the local whorehouse on a regular basis. Many profound thoughts emerge about the nature of identity and meaning in a post-colonial world, but sometimes the thoughts get lost in the stylized langauge. I personally don't relate to these themes but if you feel you do this will be a rewarding reading experience from one of the most respected modern English authors. The low star rating is simply because I need a tense plot to keep my interest.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beginning the Journey, October 8, 2000

By 

Alfred L. Hathcock (Lenoir City, Tennessee United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mimic Men (Mass Market Paperback)

This novel confronts the effects of colonialism on national and individual identity and character. This is a prominent focal point of Sir Naipaul's work. The central character of this work is an isolated and deposed island politician writing his story in the anonymnity of his London refuge: a hotel chosen for its distinctly shabby and monastic qualities. This once flamboyant and able man is now impelled,as perhaps his last significant act, to write his story.This is done without emotion, even one so shallow as self pity. Yet the story is told in a vivid and brutal style with the honesty of one driven by the need to confess a crime.This novel expresses a complex theme through a character so well developed that he tells the story of a society whose identity is dominated by not having one.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Naipaul painting with all his usual colors, January 30, 2005

By 

Eric Maroney (Trumansburg, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Mimic Men: A Novel (Paperback)

V.S. Naipaul's true genius is found in his travel books (An Area of Darkness, Among the Believers, Beyond Belief) while his novels often suffer the fate of over worn, if generally comfortable shoes: you feel as if you have trodden this ground before. This is not the case with his best works of fiction: A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and In a Free State; here Naipaul allows the stories to tell themselves, even when his superb hand - so masterful and deliberate - is the god of his created world. We get Naipaul but we get Naipaul at his distilled best: pure and unalloyed. The Mimic Men has moments of the genius Naipaul; there his the sense of almost nauseating enclosure that he can generate, as if the story was occurring inside a paper bag; there is the minute dissection of each moment of experience, as if he was an experienced vivisectionist with no qualms about slicing the flesh razor thin for our examination. He paints a world where returns are ever diminishing, and the very effort to continue living seems not a natural pursuit, but somehow supernatural in is scope. If you have the fortitude to read many of Naipaul's novels you will have the fortune to see him hone is craft as he tries to answer four or five vexing existential questions. The question for the reader is, do you want to see this done through four or five often vexing novels? For me, the answer is yes. No one can make you squirm better than Naipaul.