'A book which is nothing less than a description of the formation of an entire culture...Naipaul, with the imagination of a novelist and the meticulousness of an historian, recreates the lives and culture of those who lived in Trinidad'.

Focusing on the early nineteenth century when British occupants inflicted a reign of terror on the island's black population, V. S. Naipaul's passionate and vivid recreation of the history of Trinidad exposes the barbaric cruelties of slavery and torture and their consequences on all strata of society - from the idealist to the reactionary - in a moving account which penetrates aspects of a complex society more often overlooked by professional historians.