The nightwatchman's occurrence book · And other comic inventions

V. S. Naipaul’s legendary command of broad comedy and acute social observation is on abundant display in these classic works of fiction–two novels and a collection of stories–that capture the rhythms of life in the Caribbean and England with impressive subtlety and humor.

*The Suffrage of Elvira *is Naipaul’s hilarious take on an electoral campaign in the back country of Trinidad, where the candidates’ tactics include blatant vote-buying and supernatural sabotage. The eponymous protagonist of *Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion* is an aging Englishman of ponderously regular habits whose life is thrown into upheaval by a sudden marriage and unanticipated professional advancement. And the stories in *A Flag on the Island* take us from a Chinese bakery in Trinidad–whose black proprietor faces bankruptcy until he takes a Chinese name–to a rooming house in London–where the genteel landlady plays a nasty Darwinian game with her budgerigars. Unfailingly stylish, filled with intelligence and feeling, here is the work of a writer who can do just about anything that can be done with language.

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