Some of Naipaul’s later writings about what he called “half-made societies,” places in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Middle East, where “the West is packing its boxes, waiting for the helicopters,” were warped by his contempt for his subjects—his bitter, misanthropic view of human nature, and the accusations of ignorance, superstition, and passivity he hurled at the developing world. Naipaul acknowledged the personal roots of this scorn and how it
