The Loss of El Dorado

In this masterpiece about Trinidad, the Nobel Prize-winning author has “given us a lesson in history [and] shown us how it is best written” ( The New York Times ). The history of Trinidad begins with a delusion: the belief that somewhere nearby on the South American mainland lay El Dorado, the mythical kingdom of gold. In this extraordinary and often gripping book, V. S. Naipaul—himself a native of Trinidad—shows how that delusion drew a small island into the vortex of world events, making it th