The Naipauls of Nepaul Street

This is a moving story of a Trinidadian-Indian family’s beginnings, growth

and its inevitable dispersal. Savi Naipaul Akal’s memoir pays tribute to

extraordinary parents: Her father Seepersad Naipaul, virtual orphan in a dirtpoor

rural Indian family, one generation away from indentured migration,

who through self-education became a remarkable journalist and writer. And

her mother Dropatie, who displayed remarkable diplomatic skills in sustaining

a relationship with the large, prosperous and inward-looking Capildeo clan, of

which she was the seventh daughter, whilst loyally supporting her husband’s

insistence on independence and engagement with Trinidadian life. After

Seepersad’s tragically early death, Dropatie held the family together, so that all

seven children achieved university education.

It is an account of family loyalty, sacrifice, and sometimes tensions; pride in

the writing achievements of her brothers Vidia and Shiva, and sorrow over

estrangements and Shiva’s premature death. The memoir also gives a sharply

observed picture of cultural change in Trinidad from colony to independent

nation, of being Indian in a Creole society, and of the role of education in

migrant families.

Elegant and lucid, written with a distinctively personal voice, the book is

further enhanced by the generous quantity of family photographs that say so

much about these people and the times they lived through.