India: A Wounded Civilization
Written by V.S. Naipaul
Translator: Song Nianshen
Edition: New Classic | Nanhai Publishing Company
October 2013
"Big River Bay"
Translator: Fang Bolin
August 2014
V.S. Naipaul (1932-2018), a British writer, is the author of "Psychic Masseur", "Revisiting the Caribbean", "African Masquerade", "Big River Bay" and other works, and has won the Booker Prize, maugham Prize, and Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to postcolonial literary controversies, Naipaul was also controversial in his private life, having been accused of "misogyny", sexually abusing his wife and mistress, and often searching for a call girl in London. When Naipaul visited China in 2014, nadira Naipaul, who accompanied him, was his second wife, and the two married in 1996.
Lu Jiande (Director, Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)
Fang Berlin (translator of Naipaul's "Great River Bay")
Huang Ningqun (Editor-in-Chief of the New Classic "Naipaul Series")
On August 11, 2018, British writer V.S. Naipaul died at his home in London at the age of 86. In China, Naipaul's spread is not very high, and many people will mistakenly think that the country he portrays in the book is far away from us, but in fact, Naipaul's world is connected with us, and he analyzes the social reality of postcolonial society and developing countries with keen observation.
A Nobel Prize writer who has been snubbed by Chinese readers
Chinese readers are somewhat slow to read Naipaul. His writing peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, and his observations of Third World civilization revealed in his writings have been strongly discussed internationally for decades. But it wasn't until 2001, when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, that Naipaul appeared to Chinese readers as if he had "some kind of qualification." (Prior to this, only one copy of "Miguel Street" was introduced by Flower City Publishing House in China in 1992) In 2002, Yilin Publishing House introduced Naipaul's two masterpieces of novels, "RiverBend" (later renamed "Big River Bay" in the new classic version) and "Mr. Bishopworth's House". The following year, Triptych Books launched Naipaul's "India Trilogy" (India: A Wounded Civilization, A Dark Country: India where Memory and Reality Intersect, India: A Million Rebellions today).
By all accounts, most Chinese readers have been exposed to Naipaul for less than two decades, and many times see him as a literary label behind the Nobel Prize in Literature. What should have resonated, such as observations of the Third World and the clash between former colonial and modern civilizations, did not provoke much discussion. The reader seems to become an outsider, standing outside the modern and third worlds of the West, watching a debate that has nothing to do with him.
In 2014, Naipaul came to China to attend the Shanghai Book Fair with his wife, and a large audience poured in, but Naipaul was not in good shape. He was in a wheelchair, struggling to organize his language, and the Naipaul seen by Chinese readers was no longer the man who argued with critics such as Edward Sayyid and had the courage to do his own thing in writing. Without arrogance, anger and sharpness, he is more like a silent Zen master.
Challenging the realities of post-colonial societies
Naipaul was born in 1932 to a Brahmin family in the small Central American country of Trinidad and Tobago, where he lived with his parents in the local Indian immigrant community. On the day he was born, Naipaul's father became an English-speaking journalist, a job that influenced Naipaul's ideals in life. At the age of 7, Naipaul moved with his family to Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, to attend a local English school, which became a haven for him to embrace modern culture and ideas.
The English-speaking world gave Naipaul a different perspective, and he saw the gap between Trinidad and Tobago and the civilized world. Of course, his early work did not reflect this gap too strongly, but even so, Naipaul, a university graduate of Oxford University, published his debut novel "The Psychic Masseuse" set in Trinidad and Tobago in 1955, which provoked great resentment among the locals.
The book can be contrasted with another of Naipaul's earlier works, the short story collection Miguel Street, which is more of a writer's talent for constructing characters, connecting people hidden behind each house number, presenting communities in a way that shapes individuals, and thus outlining a certain social civilization, while "Psychic Masseur" is sharper in dealing with pre-colonial civilizations.
This is why he provoked the resentment of another postcolonial cultural critic, Edward Said, who, as the founder of postcolonial theory, considered Naipaul's novels to be extremely "ignorant" and "stupid", with no respect for the cultural cynicism of postcolonial societies. In The Psychic Masseuse, the local cultural practices of Trinidad and Tobago are described by Naipaul as extremely ignorant and backward, which will undoubtedly cause protests from the locals.
At the height of his work, in the 1960s and 1970s, he described the cultural conditions of India, the Arab world and African countries in the form of novels and travelogues, and the conflicts in his works intensified. He visited India many times and left behind the "India Trilogy", not to express some kind of homecoming feelings, but to describe the backwardness and ignorance of Indian society from a sharp and cold perspective. "The colonial education of Naipaul's immigrants is comical and outdated by Metropolitan standards," the South African writer Coetzee wrote in V.S. Naipaul: Half a Life, "Naipaul himself often adopted an authoritative attitude in his writings, more Victorian than any native Englishman, because the British now have no such courage."
Especially in a modern era where politics is full of slogans such as equality, respect, and protection for the Third World, Naipaul's sarcastic posture is extremely courageous. Compared to two other world-class postcolonial writers, Kazuo Ishiguro has almost become a gentleman of British society, Saman Rushdy's novels are more magical, and only Naipaul's writing has been challenging the realities of post-colonial society. He is an insider from a post-colonial society, he has a pair of eyes that perceive society as a "psychic", and wherever he is, he can grasp the cultural soul of the third world with words and present it without glorification.
■ viewpoint
His death was by no means a loss of English literature alone
Naipaul's writing is very sharp, in some colonized countries, people are habitually immersed in the words of the victims, but if they cannot face history and reality, they will not make real progress, Naipaul has a very thorough analysis of this problem. He started from the aspects of culture, society, and customs, and made a sobering voice. He wanted to ask why some countries were colonized and suffered an unfortunate fate, while others were able to be strong and well governed.
For example, in late Qing China, opium smoking became a common practice, and even literati like Yan Fu, who saw China's problems very thoroughly, but also smoked opium, but why did he not smoke when he studied in Britain? Not just because the British government banned it, but because everyone could consciously resist the temptation of opium. Naipaul's ruthless criticism of the colonies, including his analysis of India, is worth learning. He came out of the third world and was the most prominent one to write about colonial society and culture, and his death was not only a loss of English literature, but also a loss of our developing countries, and we lost a detractor.
He doesn't care about political correctness or the appreciation of others
I think Naipaul is the Huntington of the literary world, writing about the clash of civilizations in a storytelling way. Trinidad and Tobago, India, And Britain, living between several worlds, did not care much about how they merged, but described their differences and conflicts more. He is more detached from reality, does not care about all kinds of political correctness, and does not pursue the appreciation of others, he lives in his own world, and he is outspoken about his own views. He dared to speak of islam and the problems of the Arab world, dared to "forget" india' and dared to write about Africa as desperate. He is also a "straight male cancer" and does not have so many scruples about women.
I've only translated one of his copies of The Great River Bend. As a translator, I had the privilege of coming into contact with Naipaul at the beginning of my translation career, a writer who was both deep and readable. He touched me with the distant Africa he wrote about, but many scenes and descriptions of us as familiar. "Big River Bend" describes the changes and changes in Africa, the big people and new territories, is the end of history, or change the soup without changing the medicine, we will smile when we see it.
He deserves more readers than he does now
Since 2010, we have introduced Naipaul's work. As of 2016, Chinese Simplified editions of all his works have been published, with a total of 27 works, including fiction and non-fiction. Naipaul's fiction and non-fiction are equally important. His latest work is "Masquerade drama in Africa", but Naipaul has not produced a new work since 2010. If he has a new set later, we will definitely follow up. We plan to promote Naipaul's books as a key bibliography this year, and are currently preparing for a revision of works such as the "Indian Trilogy".
Naipaul has a lot of attention in the literary world, is well received by many writers and critics, and he also has a very loyal group of fans, but the general audience knows him far from enough, and he deserves more readers than he does now. Naipaul's works can make people resonate a lot, produce a convergence of ideas. In fact, the same situation can be seen in China in some of the stories of other countries told in his works, and the behavior and reactions of people in other cultures can also reflect the current China.
Beijing News reporter Gong Zhaohua Lu Wanting