Abstract

Magic Seeds is one of the most representative works of Naipaul, through which we can feel Naipaul’s complex of post-colonialism by creating Willie. In the novel, Willie travels from Africa to Berlin and India. During the process, he suffers cultural identity crisis he strives to find his own identity. He experiences recognizing his identity crisis, searching for his identity and finally still cannot define himself. This paper employs the theory of post-colonialism, focusing on the concept of Identity, to explore how Willie tries to seek his place in this world.

KEYWORDS: V.S. Naipaul; Magic Seeds; post-colonialism; identity crisis

摘  要

《魔种》是奈保尔的封笔之作，通过他创作的威利来感受他的后殖民情节。在小说中，威利游历了非洲、柏林和印度，在这个过程中, 他遭遇了文化身份认同问题，并努力要找到自己的文化身份。他经历了发现身份危机，寻找身份，最后还是无法确定自己的身份定位。本文采用后殖民主义理论中的文化身份认同问题，来探索威利寻求自我身份的过程。

关键词：奈保尔；《魔种》；后殖民主义；身份危机

1.    Introduction
Born in 1932, in a small town in Trinidad into a family of Indian Brahmin origin， Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul moved to Port of Spain, the capital when he was six. Naipaul was educated at Queen's Royal College, Port of Spain, and in 1950 he won a scholarship to Oxford. Encouraged by his father in writing aspirations, Naipaul started his career as a freelance writer on graduation. During this period Naipaul felt himself rootless, but found his voice as a writer in the mid-1950s, when he started to examine his own Trinidadian background. Naipaul married to Englishwoman Patricia Hale for 41 years, until her death due to cancer in 1996. Since 1950 Naipaul has lived in Britain, but traveled extensively. His essays and travel writings are often negative, unsentimental explorations of West Indian society. In 2008, The Times ranked Naipaul seventh on their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”. In 2001, he won the Nobel Prize for “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.” With the identity of diaspora and cultural rover, Naipaul has created a lot of works which reflect the marginality and uncertainty in the third world like India and Africa. He is one of the representatives of the most important postcolonial writers.