As India and Pakistan confront each other again, I remember that VS Naipaul managed to upset both countries. And Argentina, east Africa, Islamic south-east Asia, the Caribbean, Iran. Few writers have seen more of the world. Few have found it more wanting. Some put this down to the western chauvinism of a man who named his cat after the first Roman emperor. For others, it was just a lucid mind at work. His prose stings because it tends not to do abuse, or even adjectives, so much as the patient accretion of telling detail.
當印度和巴基斯坦再次對峙時，我想起V.S.奈保爾(VS Naipaul)曾經讓這兩個國家都感到不快。還有阿根廷、東非、伊斯蘭東南亞、加勒比、伊朗。很少有作家像他那樣見識過如此廣闊的世界，也很少有人像他那樣對世界感到失望。有些人把這歸因于他身上那種西方沙文主義——畢竟他把自己的貓取名為第一位羅馬皇帝。但在另一些人看來，這只是一個頭腦清晰的人在思考。他的散文之所以犀利，是因為他很少用辱罵，甚至很少用形容詞，而是通過耐心積累那些具有啟示性的細節來打動人。