"One of the few contemporary writers of whom we can speak in terms of greatness." –
Newsday "Miguel Street is the Bowery, the Tenderloin, and the Catfish Row of Trinidad's Port of Spain-its citizens a loony multitude whose knavery often rises from real kinship with pathos and tragedy.... Naipaul is at his best in these swift caricatures of human depravity." –
San Francisco Chronicle "Amusing and poignant.... Excellent reading." –
Chicago Tribune "Naipaul does not tell stories. By some miraculous sleight-of-hand he takes you to Port of Spain and shows you the rich, bawdy, consequential lives of the Trinidadians, as though there were no intervening veil of words.... I rather suspect the mantle of Chekhov has fallen on Mr. Naipaul's shoulders." –
Saturday Review