Shiva Naipaul published Love and Death in a Hot Country in 1983. The theme of the book is the abandonment of democracy in a small Latin American country. Here’s a passage from the novel:
The surprising thing about the imminent abandonment of the Constitution--that lengthy charter so top-heavy with ringing preambles, so glutinously coated with abstract principles of right and justice and obligation, so ribboned with guarantees to minorities and special interests, so honeycombed with promises of life and liberty and happiness for all, so stiff with austere legalism, so sweetened with the codes of civility, that Constitution painstakingly fabricated and assembled over several weeks in panelled, chandeliered halls and flourished in triumph at the climax--the surprising thing was not that it was about to be unceremoniously tossed out of the window, but that it had taken such a comparatively long time for that to happen.
Societies could not be created on sheets of parchment. They could not, even with the most golden of fountain pens, be signed into existence. Inevitably, men will succumb to their own reality. They will sink to the level of being where they feel most at ease with themselves. They would always act in conformity with their own natures and remake the world in their own image.
Think Iraq. Think Afghanistan. Think Egypt. Think voter suppression, N.S.A. taps, government shutdown, efforts to derail the Affordable Care Act, abortion restrictions, campaign finance.
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