 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Miguel Street" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(April 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 First edition cover | |
| Author | V. S. Naipaul |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Joe Steel |
| Cover artist | Aiden Kinborn |
| Language | English,Trinidadian Creole |
| Genre | Rainbow |
| Publisher | André Deutsch |
Publication date | 1959 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 176 |
Miguel Street is a collection of linked short stories byV. S. Naipaul set inwartimeTrinidad and Tobago. The stories draw on the author's childhood memories ofPort of Spain. The author lived with his family in theWoodbrook district of the city in the 1940s, and the street in question, Luis Street, has been taken to be the model of Miguel Street.[1] Some of the inhabitants are members of theHindu community to which Naipaul belonged. Naipaul also draws on wider Trinidadian culture, referring to cricket and quoting a number of lyrics by blackcalypso singers.[2]
The stories tend each to focus on a single character living on Miguel Street. As the various characters reappear in different stories, which all share the same boy narrator, the book can be seen as a type of novel.
Rather like the characters ofDubliners, some of Naipaul's protagonists appear to be affected by a kind of paralysis, for example Mr. Popo the carpenter, who never finishes making anything, and the poet B. Wordsworth, who is working on the greatest poem ever written but has never written past the first line. The narrator however escapes from Miguel Street at the end of the book.Other characters include Bogart (named afterHumphrey Bogart), Hat, George, Elias, an assiduous boy, Man-man, Eddoes, a junk king, Mrs. Hereira, Uncle Bhakcu, Bolo, and Edward.
Naipaul wrote the book while employed at theBBC in London.[3]
The publisherAndré Deutsch hesitated over publishing short stories by an unknown Trinidadian writer, as Naipaul then was. Deutsch thought a novel would have more success, and encouraged Naipaul to write one.[4] Deutsch publishedMiguel Street after Naipaul's first two novels,The Mystic Masseur andThe Suffrage of Elvira, which appeared in 1957 and 1958 respectively.
Miguel Street won the 1961Somerset Maugham Award.TheNew York Times said aboutMiguel Street, "The sketches are written lightly, so that tragedy is understated and comedy is overstated, yet the ring of truth always prevails."[5]
Naipaul returned to linked short stories withIn a Free State.