Miguel Street

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What to expect

“A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say ‘Slum!’ because he could see no more.” But to its residents this derelict corner of Trinidad’s capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. There’s Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build “the thing without a name.” There’s Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big Foot, the bully with glass tear ducts. There’s the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.

Set during World War II and narrated by an unnamed—but precociously observant—neighborhood boy, Miguel Street is a work of mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy and anarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page.

Critics Review

  • “Amusing and poignant…Excellent reading.”

    Chicago Tribune

  • “Miguel Street is the Bowery, the Tenderloin, and the Catfish Row of Trinidad’s Port of Spain…Naipaul is at his best in these swift caricatures of human depravity.”

    San Francisco Chronicle

  • “The earliest work by V. S. Naipaul, who died in August, is finally available as an audiobook…The dialogue comes in the patois of the Caribbean street, its cadence and beat beautifully rendered by Bahamian-born, American actor, Ron Butler who captures its humor and Naipaul’s nostalgic affection toward the people of his Trinidadian youth.”

    Washington Post (audio review)

  • “Naipaul…takes you to Port of Spain and shows you the rich, bawdy, consequential lives of the Trinidadians, as though there were no intervening veil of words.”

    Saturday Review

  • “Narrator Ron Butler takes listeners into one of Trinidad’s seamier neighborhoods with the lilting cadence of the Caribbean islands. He vividly brings to life…the rich tapestry of these urban characters.”

    AudioFile

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