writing an essay on this book took years off my life.

As the modern literary canon goes, V.S. Naipaul has not known many equals. I wish I could talk about the book itself but the real impression I was left with was of the writer himself. This book confirmed for me what I've seen of him in some of his other books I've read. Whenever I read his books I'm always left in awe of his all-encompassing, almost rapacious approach to representing his subjects objectively. As they really are.

This book is due a second reading for sure.

The Mimic Men is a work of fiction about a man who grew up on a Caribbean island called Isabella (not a real island). As an adult he moved to England for a while, came back to Isabella, trying to help reconstruct it after it stopped being an English colony and ultimately failing.

Ralph Singh is a man who tries to Anglicize himself. In school he changes his name to Ralph from Ranjit Kripalsingh. The story fluctuates back and forth between the two cultures as Ralph Singh tries to come to terms with his identity inside a Caribbean culture while trying to apply English attributes to his person and life. There are wheels within wheels because Singh is a man of Caribbean culture but also from Indian culture; yet he is not Indian either. He is Indian suffused with the culture of the islands.

The story has its moments. When he describes his life on the island, his family and relatives, I see glances of a vividness in his culture among Indians, whites and those of African descent, not to mention all the ones who share each race, which is quite common in the Caribbean. But these moments only occasionally flash here and there.

Singh tries to blend into the Englishness of the U.K. He marries a white woman, has affairs with many others, but he cannot warm up to the people or their way of life. However, going back to Isabella, he no longer fits in there either.

Really, I had a hard time understanding or caring about the characters of this novel. A lot that was going on was not clear to me, at least I failed to see the point. The only thing I found interesting were the different characters Singh describes as they come into his life.

The least interesting part of the novel is when Singh joins a group of Socialists in the U.K. Reading about him and his co-horts trying to promote these ideals was just plain boring. Describing people enamored with "causes" holds no interest for me.

I wish he had spent more time giving the reader better views of his characters but Naipaul has a habit of writing about people without any sense of who anyone is. Everyone is a stranger to him. It is as if the narrator suffers from some sort of emotional detachment and is incapable of caring about anyone or anything.

He gets away with it in his non-fiction, at least in the one non-fiction book of his I read (An Area of Darkness, his travelogue of his time in India), but it simply does not brighten this existentially bland account of people from either island who I know from personal experience are filled with so much personality and color.

The earlier standards set by Naipaul don't meet the expectations in this one, although there are glimpses of his awesome writing.

Na verdade 3,5 estrelas. Um relato maravilhosamente bem escrito, um pouco angustiante, não sei se pelo humor britânico ou cinismo do autor, a escrever sobre temas tão próximos a nós, habitantes de republiquetas latino-americanas , prisioneiros de um destino que nos faz sentirmos como eternos e exóticos expatriados quando tentamos fugir de nós mesmos.

For fans of Naipaul The Mimic Men will cover familiar territory; isolation, identity, apathy. For newcomers to Naipaul I suggest you start somewhere else. Guerrillas or A Bend in the River would probably be the best starting point. In The Mimic Men we are treated to the first person account of the life of Ralph Singe, former government minister of the small island nation of Isabella, now living in exile. The story is split into three non-linear sections: the first detailing Ralph's college years in London, and his return to Isabella with his English wife; the second dealing with his youth as a privileged, yet minority "Asiatic" on Isabella; the third covering his rise to power in the newly independent nation. As with much of Naipaul's work The Mimic Men is concerned largely with the theme of identity; the grander theme of post-colonial national identity, as well as the smaller, though no less important, theme of personal identity. Ralph (like Naipaul himself) is a man without a homeland. Though I thought this theme was better portrayed in Guerrillas and A Bend in the River, The mimic Men is still a brilliant novel written in Naipaul's trademark brutal and precise prose.

This book is utterly lacking in plot, interesting characters, or anything useful to say about the human condition. What makes it all the more frustrating is that this should be interesting; it's about a businessman turned socialist politician in a newly free Island nation. But instead of getting gripping highlights from his rise and fall from power, Naipaul chooses instead to make his narrator detached and cynical, for "literary effect" or something (it is as if he is actively sabotaging his own book). Over half the book is uninteresting biographical details and random musings, with all the action taking place in passing. I'm not usually a purist when it comes to "show, don't tell," but my goodness was this boring.

If this had been the first Naipaul I had read, I would have probably rated the book higher - it ties deep history with everyday events, it sweeps world cultures into small piles of colonials gathered for lemonade, its narrator flees to isolation, too wrung out by the cacophony of his life. I think Naipaul is great!

But the book was a bit too harsh, the narrator too self-abasing ... there is love in Biswas and there is distance in Enigma, there is cruelty in In a Free State and in Bend in the River. But I think that Mimic Men may have been just too close to home for Naipaul to be at his best, critical but not bitter, melancholy but not maudlin.

Okay look, what this novel does well it does really well. I enjoyed the writing style. I believe the messaging itself can be best described in a rather fourth wall break when it describes how the character's writing didn't have to be satirical because the situation and details itself were. It's pointing out the hypocrisy and intersectionality that exists that makes classism, colonialism, and racism so complex. It has some very insightful observations about the nature of politics and wealth/possession. HOWEVER... can someone PLEASE explain to me why the opening and ending sections were both so necessary, why such detail of physical encounters were vital? I'm fairly certain his decent and disillusionment was perfectly communicated without the need of body shaming a woman as a little extra kick.

Desperation at empire's end

This gives a good perception of Caribbean islands’ life and there people’s mentality. Being a nation gone through slavery, imperialism and finally freedom, descendants from slaves, slave masters and migrated Indians becoming a one nation, one country is a confusing affair. Intensely conscious where they belong in the social structure, yet too uncertain as to where to fit in.
The book is presented as a memoir by an Indian descendant gone to live in London. Sometimes reader needs to concentrate so much that it is almost like studding than reading for entertainment. Though humor is not sparse, the main character’s detachment to his own story makes it a bit dull.

This Book Represents the identity crisis of the protagonist Ranjit Kripal Singh, who spends his childhood in a British colony, then goes to college in London. He then returns to to his Island home torn up by decolonization, only to be exiled and ending up back in London. At 40 years old he writes his reflection on how his life turned out as it did.
Indeed the book throws light on the post-colonial realities that have shaped the Contemporary societies, and provides important insights relating to hybridity ambivalence transculturation uncentricity exile and so on.
The novel can also be seen as a mirror of Naipaul's career. Just like the rest of his novels one should focus on Naipaul himself to understand the historical and theoretical issues his books has generated.
The protagonist's relationship with space ( London in one hand and Isabella in the other hand) highlights his understanding of culture identity belonging and his longing for "certainties". thus it highlights his crisis as a lost citizen "white but not quite".
In this book, Naipaul, I think, is implicitly criticizing the colonizers for the rootlessness of the ex-colonized individuals. Indeed Singh, unlike many other ex-colonized, is not handicapped by poverty ignorance or a lack of natural Talent. Thus he is exposed, thanks to his education to a more sophisticated London Society. In spite of all of that he is not less vulnerable to the identity crisis.
To quickly conclude our mimic man is lost between his artificial home and the Imperial Center, two completely different conflicting locations, among which Rangit or Ralph has lost his belonging to one definite clear home.

To be honest the book is good. But did I enjoy it? No is the answer simply because I'm not reading it I'm studying it for the literature exam.