The work of V. S. Naipaul, who died in August 2018 at age 85, provided an excoriating examination of what it means to be a colonial and postcolonial subject. In 1979, the novelist paid a visit to NYU in order to deliver the James Lectures at the New York Institute for the Humanities. In the second of two archival episodes, Naipaul reads an excerpt from his 1971 novel In a Free State and a passage from his then-just-released A Bend in the River, soon to become one of his most celebrated—and controversial—works.

Special thanks to DJ Cashmere for his work on this episode.

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