Miguel Street, V. S. Naipaul
Miguel Street, V. S. Naipaul
List: $19.95 | Sale: $13.97
Club: $9.97

Miguel Street

Author: V. S. Naipaul

Narrator: Ron Butler

Unabridged: 5 hr 48 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/17/2018

Synopsis

“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.

About V. S. Naipaul

V. S. Naipaul (1932–2018) was the author of more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction. His honors include the Nobel Prize for Literature, the Booker Prize, the Trinity Cross, and a knighthood for services to literature. He was named a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction. He was born in Trinidad in 1932 and went to Oxford on a scholarship in 1950.

About Ron Butler

Ron Butler is a Los Angeles-based actor and voice artist with over a hundred film and television credits (playing everything from brooding doctors to screwball hipsters). Most kids will recognize him from the three seasons he spent on Nickelodeon's True Jackson, VP. Ron works regularly as a commercial and animation voice-over artist and has voiced a wide variety of audiobooks. He is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company and an Independent Filmmaker Project Award winner for his work in the HBO film Everyday People. Originally from the Bahamas, Ron grew up singing calypso onstage with his father (the country's number-one recording artist) before touring (and recording) in Europe with a jazz band. In his spare time, he impersonates the president while playing the ukulele.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on November 09, 2019

This book is not really a novel; it’s a collection of interrelated vignettes or short stories about a dozen or so men in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad during WW II. It’s a short book so each story is 5 to 7 pages or so. The author grew up nearby. There is humor but these are not pretty stories. Just about......more

Goodreads review by Mark on May 18, 2023

I read this in 1981 or thereabouts as part of my English Literature O-level exam. It's the only one of the books that we studied which I can remember the slightest thing about, so it must have had something going for it to still be in my head after 40 years. I remembered it today as the BBC are repor......more

Goodreads review by Kiran on January 18, 2025

Miguel Street, by V.S. Naipaul, captures the essence of life in Trinidad in the 1940s. The colorful cast of characters who inhabit Miguel Street (likely a euphemistic reference to Frederick Street), their often comedic interactions in various dramatic situations, paints a vivid portrait of life in a......more

Goodreads review by Jigar on December 07, 2016

How beautiful this book is! How simple! How charming! The Caribbean street filled with lowlifes, with dreamers, with quirky, street-smart or naive characters literally comes to life in Naipaul's beautiful, beautiful prose. It is a panoramic narration - we are introduced to people one by one, a chapte......more

Quotes

“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

Awards

  • Washington Post Pick
  • Audie Award Finalist
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