Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales

This collection is the pioneering beginning of Indian Caribbeans writing about themselves, the beginnings of the Caribbean short story and highly readable and perceptive portrayal of Indian Trinidad in the process of change. 

This collection prints in its entirety the collection that Seepersad Naipaul published in 1943, including those stories that V.S. Naipaul chose to omit in the collection of his father’s stories he published in 1976. In addition, this volume collects all the stories published in Caribbean magazines and newspapers and broadcast in the Caribbean Voices programme both before and after 1943. It restores Seepersad Naipaul's intentions in the writing of his longest piece of fiction -- his extension of the story of Gurudeva, conflicted between tradition and modernity, by going back to Seepersad's manuscript, whilst noting the editorial changes made by his son, thirty years after his father's death. In its perception that Indians in Trinidad had to embrace their hybridity, in its sympathetic treatment of women, and in its exploration of the inner worlds of a character such as Gopi – perhaps the nearest to a self-satirising portrait (and the story omitted by V.S. Naipaul) – this collection should restore Seepersad Naipaul – in his own right – as an essential figure in Caribbean fiction.