Nobel laureate Walcott mocks Naipaul in verse

Walcott read out the opening lines of the poetry: “I have been bitten. I must avoid infection. Or else I’ll be as dead as Naipaul’s fiction.”

In fact, he has expressed his anger at what he sees as Naipaul’s rejection of his Caribbean heritage in order to gain acceptance from the British literary establishment.

In particular, Walcott is outraged that Naipaul, whose ancestors were Indian labourers who moved to Trinidad in the 19th century, thanked only Britain and India in his Nobel acceptance speech, but not the country of his birth.

The poem’s title refers to an animal that was imported from India under the British empire. As Walcott puts it: “The mongoose takes its orders from the Raj.” The poem also attacks Naipaul’s later novels Half a Life and Magic Seeds with the words: “The plots are forced, the prose sedate and silly. The anti-hero is a prick named Willie.” Walcott expresses disbelief that this Naipaul can be the same author who wrote A House for Mr Biswas, which won the Nobel prize.

In the poem there is a coded reference to Naipaul’s essay on Walcott, published in 2007, which praised Walcott.

Both writers have refused to comment on the poem.

However, Patrick French, Naipaul’s biographer, said: “Knowing Naipaul, he will say nothing and then at some point he will lash out. He said to me once: ‘I settle all my accounts.'”