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.
当印度和巴基斯坦再次对峙时，我想起V.S.奈保尔(VS Naipaul)曾经让这两个国家都感到不快。还有阿根廷、东非、伊斯兰东南亚、加勒比、伊朗。很少有作家像他那样见识过如此广阔的世界，也很少有人像他那样对世界感到失望。有些人把这归因于他身上那种西方沙文主义——毕竟他把自己的猫取名为第一位罗马皇帝。但在另一些人看来，这只是一个头脑清晰的人在思考。他的散文之所以犀利，是因为他很少用辱骂，甚至很少用形容词，而是通过耐心积累那些具有启示性的细节来打动人。