Love and Death in a Hot Country

"Societies could not be created on sheets of parchment. They could not, even with the most golden of fountain pens, be signed into existence. Inevitably, men will succumb to their own reality. They will sink to the level of being where they feel most at ease with themselves. They would always act in conformity with their own natures and remake the world in their own image. The abandonment of the Constitution could be likened to a house settling into its foundations. That, more or less, was what was happening to them. They were falling prey to their own reality, settling into their foundations. (63)"

Shiva Naipaul's final novel, Love and Death in a Hot Country, reflects the darkness of his visiting Guyana after the Jonestown Massacre. In tone and style, this novel bears a much closer resemblance to his brother's novels, beginning with The Mimic Men. Like that great novel, Shiva sets the story in a fictionalized version of a Caribbean country (Cuyama, a thinly-veiled Guyana with aspects of Suriname's demographics thrown in) and ruminates on what both brothers likely see as the chaos and nothingness of Guyana. For those accustomed to Shiva Naipaul's humor, this is a radical departure with the same tone and message of his older brother on postcolonial politics, black radicalism, and the well-intentioned whites who think they're making a difference. Thus, this novel is far too similar to Vidia's Mimic Men or Guerrillas for my taste (there is even a character descended from French Creoles who fled Haiti in the early 19th century, just as in Mimic Men), but still worthwhile for a haunting read on Guyana as the dictatorship unveiled itself. Again, like Vidia, Cuyama/Guyana, or the Caribbean at large, is a region of chaos, no civilization to speak of, no meaning. Cuyama's streets are in decay, everything is in a state of decay or reverting to jungle. This nihilistic theme pervades the character of Dina, a "mixed-race" Indian-Portuguese, whose husband, Aubrey St. Pierre, clings to grandiose ideas of revolution, social equality, and a Cuyamese nation that, to Dina (or, by extension, Shiva Naipaul), will never be. For someone trapped in his older brother's shadow, this final novel only serves to confirm it.