Black & White (book)

"Black & White" is a non-fiction book written by Shiva Naipaul and published by Hamish Hamilton in 1980. The book is based on Naipaul's trip to Guyana in the aftermath of the Jonestown Massacre, and his subsequent trip to the United States, in which he followed up links to the Cult. Naipaul's aim in the book appeared to be to trace the web spun by the Rev. Jim Jones, founder of the Jonestown Cult, over the course of his life in the United States, particularly California and the counter culture, and the connections Jones made with Guyana's political elite. Establishing Jones' web was part of Naipaul's larger strategy of implicating the wider alternative and Civil Rights movement in the Jonestown Massacre through a cycle of mass delusion.

Naipaul would later tell his father-in-law of the arresting effects visiting Jonestown had had on him, saying that the dissipation of the earlier comic, lighter tone in his work was due to this. [Stuart, Douglas: Foreword to "An Unfinished Journey", Hamish Hamilton, 1986]

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