Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories and Pieces

"I understood. Sufficient unto any man the handicap of being straightforwardly Indian or straightforwardly West Indian. But to contrive somehow how to combine the two was a challenge to reason. An Indian from the West Indies! I was guilty of a compound sin."

Shiva Naipaul's Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories and Pieces consists of short stories and travel writings, taking the reader from Naipaul's native Trinidad to Puerto Rico, Grenada, Suriname, Seychelles, England, Portugal, India, Iran, Morocco, and Jamaica. While I found his travel writing to be, shall we say, less racist or offensive than VS Naipaul, both share a similar worldview ("My day trip between Islam and Christianity, Africa and Europe, had gone sour on me"). Shiva's perceptive observations on the "Bush Negroes" of Suriname was interesting (they're not Africa in South America, but have become something new altogether), as was his critical but, in my view, accurate statements on the problems of Rastafarianism as a faith and ideology. His fiction, however, is where he shines. The characteristically Naipaul sense of humor, mixed with some condescension, characterizes his short stories in this collection. By far, Naipaul's talent with comedy is most apparent throughout all of the stories, especially "Mr Sookhoo and the Carol Singers" and "The Beauty Contest," two stories set in Trinidad featuring lovable yet amusing characters.