The work of V.S. Naipaul, who died in August 2018 at age 85, explored the depths of the postcolonial experience, beginning with his youth in his native Trinidad. In 1979, the novelist visited NYU to deliver the New York Institute for the Humanities’ James Lectures. In the first of two archival episodes, Naipaul lectures on his experience as a young reader and in the “incomplete space” of the Caribbean and reads from his Booker Prize-winning 1971 novel In a Free State.

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

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