Guerrillas Av V. S. Naipaul

<p>Set on a troubled Caribbean island – where Asians, Africans, Americans and former British colonials co-exist in a state of suppressed hysteria – V. S. Naipaul''s <i>Guerrillas</i> is a novel of colonialism and revolution. A white man arrives with his mistress, an Englishwoman influenced by fantasies of native power and sexuality, unaware of the consequences of her actions.<br><br> Together with a leader of the ‘revolution’, they act out a gripping drama of death, sexual violence and spiritual impotence. <i>Guerrillas</i> depicts a convulsion in public life, and ends in private violence. The novel comes with extraordinary force from the centre of a profound moral awareness of the world’s plight.<br><br> ‘Impeccable . . . <i>Guerrillas</i> seems to me Naipaul’s <i>Heart of Darkness</i>: a brilliant artist’s anatomy of emptiness, and of despair’ – <i>Observer</i></p>