Miguel Street

E-142: Vanguard. Very Good in Very Good dust jacket. 1960. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Published by The Vanguard Press, New York. 1959. 222 pgs. First Edition/First Printing. Bart Forbes DJ has shelf-wear present to the DJ (spine lightly sunned, light chipping present to the crown and heel of the spine; price intact but scribbled on). Bound in yellow cloth boards with titles present to the spine. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks, binding tight and solid, boards clean with no wear present. “A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say ‘Slum! ’ because he could see no more. ” But to its residents this derelict corner of Trinidad’s capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. There’s Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build “the thing without a name. ” There’s Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big Foot, the bully with glass tear ducts. There’s the lovely Mrs. Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion. Set during World War II and narrated by an unnamed–but precociously observant–neighborhood boy, Miguel Street is a work of mercurial mood shifts, by turns sweetly melancholy and anarchically funny. It overflows with life on every page. E-66; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 222 pages .