aspirations

Trinidad is one of those places that are represented in my Polyglot Library by a single author – most obviously, the Nobel Prize winner, V. S. Naipaul. I acquired his Writer's People some years ago, as a book sold at an occasional price in one of the „cheap bookshops” in Kraków. It brought me a first glimpse of what World Literature may be, and what does it mean "interesting" and "important" in global context. From my tiny Polish perspective, it was hard to believe for me that such things may find international visibility. In this book, Naipaul speaks about the cultural aspirations in the tiny scale of the island inhabited by a mixed population, with some percentage of Indian expats. Sort of amalgam under British auspices. This is also, I suppose where and how he gets his visibility: studying in Oxford, he comes to the imperial forefront of the planet. Such things are even more exotic than Trinidad and Tobago, when you are someone burrowed in Eastern Europe.


V. S. Naipaul, A Writer's People. Ways of Looking and Feeling, New York – Toronto, Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.