V. S. Naipaul, The Mimic Men

Matthew Whittle (University of Kent at Canterbury)

Ed. by Anna Bernard, King's College London
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 4.1.1: Anglophone Writing and Culture of Central America and the Caribbean.
Vol. editors: Ronald Cummings (McMaster University), Delphine Munos (Université de Liège), Melanie Otto (Trinity College Dublin), Jak Peake (University of Essex), Abigail Ward (University of Nottingham)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1967

Places

United Kingdom (Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

In his Nobel Lecture from December 7^th 2001, entitled “Two Worlds”, Naipaul described The Mimic Men (1967) as being:

[A]bout colonial shame and fantasy, a book, in fact, about how the powerless lie about themselves, since it is their only resource. [...] [I]t was not about mimics. It was about colonial men mimicking the conditions of manhood, men who had grown to distrust everything about themselves.

“Mimicry” in Naipaul’s novel is thus the appropriation by “colonial men” – a general term for colonised subjects – of the power structures upon which colonialism has been built and continues to be upheld. Throughout the text, such power structures are presented in t…

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2623 words

Citation: Whittle, Matthew. "The Mimic Men". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 November 2013 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=170, accessed 01 November 2024.]

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