SOURCE: Idris, Farhad B. “The Native Returns: Conrad and Orientalism in V. S. Naipaul's An Area of Darkness.” South Carolina Review 32, no. 2 (spring 2000): 43-53.

In the following essay, Idris investigates the influence of Joseph Conrad on An Area of Darkness.

An Area of Darkness is the account of V. S. Naipaul's first visit to India. Born in a Trinidad Indian community, Naipaul went to England at the age of eighteen, in 1950, on a government scholarship to study at Oxford. After graduation and stints at a cement company and the BBC, he succeeded in realizing his old ambition—a writing career. By the time Naipaul got to India, in 1962 at the age of thirty, he had established himself as a writer and had to his credit six books, including the masterpiece A House for Mr. Biswas.¹ The last of these, Middle Passage, is a travel book about the Caribbean...