V. S. Naipaul

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul TC

(/ˈvɪdjɑːdər ˌsuːrədʒprəˈsɑːd ˈnaɪpɔːl,naɪˈpɔːl/; 17 August 1932 – 11 August2018), most commonly known as V. S.Naipaul, and informally, Vidia Naipaul, wasan Indo-Trinidadian-born British writer ofworks of fiction and nonfiction in English.He is known for his comic early novels setin Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienationin the wider world, and his vigilant

chronicles of life and travels. He wrote inprose that was widely admired, but hisviews sometimes aroused controversy. Hepublished more than thirty books over fiftyyears.

Sir

V. S. NaipaulTC

VS Naipaul in 2016

Born VidiadharSurajprasadNaipaul[nb 1]

17 August 1932Chaguanas, CaroniCounty, BritishTrinidad and Tobago(present-day Trinidadand Tobago)

Died 11 August 2018(aged 85)

London, England,United Kingdom

Occupation Novelist, travel writer,essayist

Citizenship British[1]

Alma mater University College,Oxford

Period 1957–2010

Genre Novel, essay

Subject

Parents Seepersad Naipaul(father)

Droapatie Capildeo(mother)

Notable works A House for MrBiswas

In a Free State

Naipaul won the Booker Prize in 1971 forhis novel In a Free State. In 1989, he wasawarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad andTobago's highest national honour. He

A Bend in the River

The Enigma ofArrivalINDIA: Awounded civilization

Notable awards Booker Prize 1971 Nobel Prize inLiterature 2001

Spouses Patricia Ann Hale(m. 1955; died 1996)

Nadira Khannum Alvi(m. 1996)

received a knighthood in Britain in 1990,and in 2001, the Nobel Prize in Literature.

In the late 19th century, Naipaul'sgrandparents had emigrated from India towork in Trinidad's plantations asindentured servants. His breakthroughnovel A House for Mr Biswas waspublished in 1961. On the fiftiethanniversary of its publication, he dedicatedit to Patricia Anne Hale, to whom he wasmarried from 1955 until her death in 1996,and who had served as first reader, editor,and critic of his writings.

Early life

Where there had been swamp at the foot of theNorthern Range, with mud huts with earthenwalls that showed the damp halfway up ... therewas now the landscape of Holland. ... Sugarcaneas a crop had ceased to be important. None ofthe Indian villages were like villages I had known.No narrow roads; no dark, overhanging trees; nohuts; no earth yards with hibiscus hedges; noceremonial lighting of lamps, no play ofshadows on the wall; no cooking of food in half-walled verandas, no leaping firelight; no flowersalong gutters or ditches where frogs croaked thenight away. [2]

 — From Enigma of Arrival (1987)

Naipaul was born on 17 August 1932 inChaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago.[3] He

was the second child of DroapatieCapildeo and Seepersad Naipaul, and hada Hindu upbringing. His younger brotherwas the writer Shiva Naipaul.[4] In the1880s, his grandparents had migratedfrom India to work as indentured labourerson the sugar plantations.[5][6] In the Indianimmigrant community in Trinidad,Naipaul's father became an English-language journalist, and in 1929 begancontributing articles to the TrinidadGuardian.[7] In 1932, the year Naipaul wasborn, his father joined the staff as theChaguanas correspondent.[8] In "APrologue to an Autobiography" (1983),Naipaul describes how his father's

reverence for writers and for the writinglife spawned his own dreams andaspirations to become a writer.[9]

In 1939, when he was six years old,[5]

Naipaul's family moved in with them in abig house in Trinidad's capital, Port ofSpain.[10][11] There, Naipaul enrolled in thegovernment-run Queen's Royal College, awell-regarded school that was modelledafter a British public school.[12] Upongraduation, Naipaul won a TrinidadGovernment scholarship that allowed himto study at any institution of higherlearning in the British Commonwealth; hechose Oxford.

At University College, Oxford, Naipaul'searly attempts at writing, he felt, werecontrived. Lonely and unsure of his abilityand calling, he became depressed.[13] InApril 1952, he took an impulsive trip toSpain, where he quickly spent all he hadsaved.[14] He called his impulsive trip "anervous breakdown".[15] Thirty years later,he called it "something like a mentalillness".[16]

In 1952, before visiting Spain, Naipaul metPatricia Ann Hale, his future wife, at acollege play. With Hale's support, he began

Education in England

to recover and gradually to write. Shebecame a partner in planning his career.Her family was hostile to the relationship;his was unenthusiastic. In June 1953,Naipaul and Hale graduated from Oxford.Naipaul graduated with a second-classdegree. Peter Bayley, his Oxford tutor,would later comment that Naipaul "had notquite forgiven us for giving him a second-class degree".

In 1953, Naipaul's father died.[17] Heworked at odd jobs and borrowed moneyfrom Hale and his family in Trinidad.

Life in London

The freelancers' room was like a club: chat,movement, the separate anxieties of young oryoungish men below the passing fellowship ofthe room. That was the atmosphere I waswriting in. That was the atmosphere I gave toBogart's Port of Spain street. Partly for the sakeof speed, and partly because my memory orimagination couldn't rise to it, I had given hisservant room hardly any furniture: the Langhamroom itself was barely furnished. And I benefitedfrom the fellowship of the room that afternoon.Without that fellowship, without the response ofthe three men who read the story, I might nothave wanted to go on with what I had begun.

 — From, "A Prologue to an Autobiography"(1983).[18]

Naipaul moved to London in 1954. InJanuary 1955, he and Pat were married. InDecember 1954, he began appearing onthe BBC radio programme CaribbeanVoices once a week. Sitting in the BBCfreelancers' room in the old LanghamHotel, he wrote "Bogart", the first story ofMiguel Street, which was inspired by aneighbour he knew as a child in Port ofSpain. Naipaul wrote Miguel Street in fiveweeks. The New York Times said about thebook: "The sketches are written lightly, sothat tragedy is understated and comedy isoverstated, yet the ring of truth alwaysprevails."[19]

Diana Athill, an editor at the publishingcompany André Deutsch, read MiguelStreet and liked it, but publisher AndréDeutsch thought a book of short stories byan unknown Caribbean writer unlikely tosell profitably in Britain.[20] He encouragedNaipaul to write a novel.[20] Naipaul quicklywrote The Mystic Masseur [20] and it waspublished in 1955.

In 1956, Naipaul returned to Trinidad andTobago for a two-month stay with hisfamily. Travelling by ship there, he senthumorous sketches of the ship's WestIndian passengers to Pat.[21] These

Early Trinidad novels

sketches became the inspiration for TheSuffrage of Elvira, a comic novella about arural election in Trinidad.[22] In 1957,Naipaul became an editorial assistant atthe Cement and Concrete Association(C&CA), his only full-time job.[23] The C&CAwas to be the setting for Naipaul's laternovel, Mr Stone and the Knights Companion(1963).[23] At this time the NewStatesman's Kingsley Martin gave Naipaula part-time job reviewing books, a job hedid from 1957 to 1961.[24]

The Mystic Masseur was awarded theJohn Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1958, andMiguel Street the Somerset Maugham

Award in 1961 with W. SomersetMaugham himself approving the first-everselection of a non-European for theprize.[25]

For his next novel, A House for Mr Biswas(1961), Naipaul took for inspirationchildhood memories of his father (later he

 

Seepersad Naipaul, father of V. S. Naipaul, and theinspiration for the protagonist of the novel, Mr Biswas,with his Ford Prefect.

wrote that the novel "destroyed memory"in some respects).[26] In the novel the titlecharacter Mohun Biswas takes asuccession of vocations (apprentice to aHindu priest, signboard painter, grocerystore proprietor, and reporter for TheTrinidad Sentinel).[27] What ambition andresourcefulness Mr Biswas has areinevitably undermined by his dependenceon his powerful in-laws and the vagaries ofthe colonial society in which he lives.[27]

The book consumed Naipaul. In 1983, hewrote:

The book took three years to

write. It felt like a career; and

there was a short period,

towards the end of the writing,

when I do believe I knew all or

much of the book by heart. The

labour ended; the book began to

recede. And I found that I was

unwilling to re-enter the world I

had created, unwilling to expose

myself again to the emotions

that lay below the comedy. I

became nervous of the book. I

The emergency was over. And so wasmy year. The short winter was fadingfast; it was no longer pleasant to sitout in the sun; the dust would not nowbe laid until the monsoon. ... India hadnot worked its magic on me. Itremained the land of my childhood, anarea of darkness; like the Himalayanpasses, it was closing up again, as fast

Aftercompleting AHouse forMrBisw

haven't read it since I passed the

proofs in May 1961.

— From the Foreword to AHouse for Mr. Biswas[28]

Novels and travel writing

as I withdrew from it, into a land ofmyth; it seemed to exist in just thetimelessness which I had imagined asa child, into which, for all that I walkedon Indian earth, I knew I could notpenetrate. In a year I had not learnedacceptance. I had learned myseparateness from India, and wascontent to be a colonial, without apast, without ancestors.

 — From An Area of Darkness(1964).[29]

as,NaipaulandPatspentthenextfivemonths inBritis

h Guiana, Suriname, Martinique andJamaica,[30][31] where Naipaul took notesfor The Middle Passage: Impressions ofFive Societies – British, French and Dutch in

the West Indies and South America, his firsttravel book.[30][32] He wrote, "The history ofthe islands can never be told satisfactorily.Brutality is not the only difficulty. History isbuilt around achievement and creation;and nothing was created in the WestIndies."[33]

In 1962, Naipaul and Pat went to India, theland of Naipaul's ancestors, where Naipaulwrote An Area of Darkness.[34][35] For thefirst time in his life, he felt anonymous,even faceless. He was no longer identified,he felt, with a special ethnic group as hehad been in Trinidad and England; it madehim anxious.[36][37] He was upset by what

Coconut trees and beach and thewhite of breakers seemed to meet at apoint in the distance. It was notpossible to see where coconut turnedto mangrove and swampland. Hereand there, interrupting the straight lineof the beach, were the trunks of treeswashed up by the sea. I set myself to

he saw as the resigned or evasive Indianreaction to poverty and suffering.[38][39]

While in India, Naipaul wrote Mr Stone andthe Knights Companion. He accepted aninvitation to write a monthly "Letter fromLondon" for The Illustrated Weekly ofIndia.[40]

Naipaulhadspentanoverwrou

walk to one tree, then to the other. Iwas soon far away from the villageand from people, and was alone on thebeach, smooth and shining silver in thedying light. No coconut now, butmangrove, tall on the black cages oftheir roots. From the mangroveswamps channels ran to the oceanbetween sand banks that were dailymade and broken off, as neatly as ifcut by machines, shallow channels ofclear water touched with the amber ofdead leaves, cool to the feet, differentfrom the warm sea.

 — From The Mimic Men (1967).[41]

ghtyearin

India.[42] Back in London, after An Area ofDarkness was completed, he felt creatively

drained.[42] He felt he had used up hisTrinidad material.[43] Neither India nor thewriting of Mr Stone and the KnightsCompanion, his only attempt at a novel setin Britain with white British characters, hadspurred new ideas for imaginativewriting.[43] His finances too were low, andPat went back to teaching to supplementthem.[42] Naipaul's books had receivedmuch critical acclaim, but they were notyet money makers.[42] Socially, he was nowbreaking away from the Caribbean Voicescircle, but no doors had opened tomainstream British society.[44]

That changed when Naipaul wasintroduced to Antonia Fraser, at the timethe wife of conservative politician HughFraser.[45] Fraser introduced Naipaul to hersocial circle of upper-class Britishpoliticians, writers, and performingartists.[45] In this circle was the wealthysecond Baron Glenconner, father ofnovelist Emma Tennant and owner ofestates in Trinidad, who arranged for anunsecured loan of £7,200 for Naipaul.[46]

Naipaul and Pat bought a three-floorhouse on Stockwell Park Crescent.[47]

In late 1964, Naipaul was asked to write anoriginal script for an American movie.[48]

He spent the next few months in Trinidadwriting the story, a novella named "A Flagon the Island", later published in thecollection A Flag on the Island. Thefinished version was not to the director'sliking and the movie was never made.[48]

The story is set in 1964, in a Caribbeanisland that is not named.[49] The maincharacter is an American named Frankiewho affects the mannerisms of FrankSinatra.[48] Frankie has links to the islandfrom having served there during World WarII.[50] He revisits reluctantly when his shipanchors during a hurricane.[50] Naipaulwilfully makes the pace of the bookfeverish, the narrative haphazard, the

characters loud, the protagonist fickle ordeceptive, and the dialogueconfusing.[50][48] Balancing the presenttime is Frankie's less disordered, thoughcomfortless, memory of 20 yearsbefore.[51] Then he had become a part of acommunity on the island.[51] He had triedto help his poor friends by giving away theample U.S. Army supplies he had.[51] Noteveryone was happy about receiving helpand not everyone benefited.[51] Frankiewas left chastened about finding tidysolutions to the island's socialproblems.[51] This theme, indirectlydeveloped in the story, is one to whichNaipaul would return.

Not long after finishing A Flag on theIsland, Naipaul began work on the novelThe Mimic Men, though for almost a yearhe did not make significant progress.[52] Atthe end of this period, he was offered aWriter-in-Residence fellowship at MakerereUniversity in Kampala, Uganda.[53] There, inearly 1966, he began to rewrite hismaterial, and went on to complete thenovel quickly.[54] The finished novel brokenew ground for him.[54] Unlike hisCaribbean work, it was not comic.[55] It didnot unfold chronologically.[56] Its languagewas allusive and ironic, its overall structurewhimsical.[57] It had strands of both fictionand non-fiction, a precursor of other

Naipaul novels.[58] It was intermittentlydense, even obscure,[56] but it also hadbeautiful passages, especially descriptiveones of the fictional tropical island ofIsabella. The subject of sex appearedexplicitly for the first time in Naipaul'swork.[59] The plot, to the extent there isone, centres on a protagonist, Ralph Singh,an East Indian-West Indian politician fromIsabella.[57] Singh is in exile in London andattempting to write his politicalmemoirs.[57] Earlier, in the immediateaftermath of decolonization in a number ofBritish colonies in the late 1950s and early1960s, Singh had shared political powerwith a more powerful African-Caribbean

politician. Soon, the memoirs take on amore personal aspect. There areflashbacks to the formative and definingperiods of Singh's life. In many of these,during crucial moments, whether duringhis childhood, married life, or politicalcareer, he appears to abandonengagement and enterprise.[57] These, herationalizes later, belong only to fully madeEuropean societies. When The Mimic Menwas published, it received generallypositive critical notice. In particular,Caribbean politicians, such as MichaelManley and Eric Williams weighed in, thelatter writing: "V. S. Naipaul's description of

West Indians as 'mimic men' is harsh buttrue ..."[60]

Back in London in October 1966, Naipaulreceived an invitation from the Americanpublisher Little, Brown and Company towrite a book on Port-of-Spain.[61] The booktook two years to write, its scope wideningwith time. The Loss of El Dorado (1969)eventually became a narrative history ofTrinidad based on primary sources. Patspent many months in the archives of theBritish Library reading those sources.[61] Inthe end, the finished product was not tothe liking of Little, Brown, who wereexpecting a guidebook.[61] Alfred A. Knopf

agreed to publish it instead in the UnitedStates, as did André Deutsch later inBritain.[61]

The Loss of El Dorado is an attempt toferret out an older, deeper history ofTrinidad, one preceding its commonlytaught history as a British-run plantationeconomy of slaves and indenturedworkers.[62] Central to Naipaul's history aretwo stories: the search for El Dorado, aSpanish obsession, in turn pursued by theBritish, and the British attempt to sparkfrom their new colony of Trinidad, even asit was itself becoming mired in slavery, arevolution of lofty ideals in South

America.[62] Sir Walter Raleigh andFrancisco Miranda would become thehuman faces of these stories.[62] Althoughslavery is eventually abolished, the soughtfor social order slips away in the face ofuncertainties created by changeablepopulations, languages, and governmentsand by the cruelties inflicted by the island'sinhabitants on each other.[62]

Before Naipaul began writing The Loss ofEl Dorado, he had been unhappy with thepolitical climate in Britain.[63] He had beenespecially unhappy with the increasingpublic animosity, in the mid-1960s,towards Asian immigrants from Britain's

ex-colonies.[63] During the writing of thebook, he and Pat sold their house inLondon, and led a transient life, living inthe homes of friends, sometimes for rent,sometimes not. After the book wascompleted, they travelled to Trinidad andCanada with a view to finding a location inwhich to settle.[64] Naipaul had hoped towrite a blockbuster, one relieving him offuture money anxieties. As it turned out,The Loss of El Dorado sold only 3,000copies in the US, where major sales wereexpected; Naipaul also missed Englandmore than he had calculated. It was thusin a depleted state, both financial andemotional, that he returned to Britain.[64]

Earlier, during their time in Africa, Naipauland Pat had travelled to Kenya, staying amonth in Mombasa on the Indian Oceancoast.[65] They had travelled in ruralUganda to the Kisoro District on the south-western border with Rwanda and theCongo.[65] Naipaul showed interest in thegreat culture, history and traditions of theBaganda people.[65] When Uganda's primeminister Milton Obote deposed, militarily,the President of Uganda, who was also theKabaka of Buganda, Naipaul was critical ofthe British press for not condemning theaction enough.[66] Naipaul also travelled toTanzania with a young American he hadmet in Kampala, Paul Theroux.[66] It was

upon this African experience that Naipaulwould draw during the writing of his nextbook, In a Free State, published in 1971.[67]

In the title novella, "In a Free State", twoyoung expatriate Europeans drive acrossan African country, which remainsnameless but which offers clues ofUganda, Kenya, and Rwanda.[68] Thenovella speaks to many themes. Thecolonial era ends and Africans governthemselves.[68] Political chaos, frequentlyviolent, takes hold in newly decolonizedcountries.[68] Young, idealistic, expatriatewhites are attracted to these countries,seeking expanded moral and sexual

freedoms. They are rootless, their bondswith the land tenuous; at the slightestdanger they leave.[69] The older,conservative, white settlers, by contrast,are committed to staying, even in the faceof danger.[69] The young expatriates,though liberal, can be raciallyprejudiced.[69] The old settlers,unsentimental, sometimes brutal, canshow compassion.[70] The young,engrossed in narrow preoccupations, areuncomprehending of the dangers thatsurround them.[69] The old areknowledgeable, armed, and ready todefend themselves.[70] The eventsunfolding along the car trip and the

conversation during it become the meansof exploring these themes.[69] In a FreeState received the 1971 Booker Prize andwas effectvely Naipaul's critical andcommercial breakthrough.

In 1974, Naipaul wrote the novel Guerrillas,following a creative slump that lastedseveral years.[71] A Bend in the River,published in 1979, marks the beginning ofhis exploration of native historicaltraditions, deviating from his usual "NewWorld" examinations.[72] Naipaul alsocovered the 1984 Republican National

Later works

Convention in Dallas, Texas, at the behestof Robert B. Silvers, editor of The New YorkReview of Books, after which Naipaul wrote"Among the Republicans",[73] ananthropological study of a "white tribe inthe United States".[74]

In 1987, The Enigma of Arrival, a novel infive sections, was published.

Naipaul continued to write non-fictionworks, his last being The Masque of Africa:Glimpses of African Belief (2010), writtenfollowing the author's trips to Africa in2008–09. The book explores indigenousreligious beliefs and rituals, where Naipaul

portrays the countries he visited in real lifeas bleak, and the people primitive.[75]

In awarding Naipaul the 2001 Nobel Prizein Literature, the Swedish Academypraised his work "for having unitedperceptive narrative and incorruptiblescrutiny in works that compel us to see thepresence of suppressed histories."[74] TheCommittee added: "Naipaul is a modernphilosopher carrying on the tradition thatstarted originally with Lettres persanes andCandide. In a vigilant style, which has beendeservedly admired, he transforms rage

Critical responses

into precision and allows events to speakwith their own inherent irony."[74] TheCommittee also noted Naipaul's affinitywith the novelist Joseph Conrad:

Naipaul is Conrad's heir as the

annalist of the destinies of

empires in the moral sense:

what they do to human beings.

His authority as a narrator is

grounded in the memory of

what others have forgotten, the

history of the vanquished.[74]

Naipaul's fiction and especially his travelwriting have been criticised for theirallegedly unsympathetic portrayal of theThird World. The novelist Robert Harrishas called Naipaul's portrayal of Africaracist and "repulsive," reminiscent ofOswald Mosley's fascism.[76] Edward Saidargued that Naipaul "allowed himself quiteconsciously to be turned into a witness forthe Western prosecution", promoting whatSaid classified as "colonial mythologiesabout wogs and darkies".[77] Said believedthat Naipaul's worldview may be mostsalient in his book-length essay The MiddlePassage (1962), composed followingNaipaul's return to the Caribbean after 10

years of exile in England, and the work AnArea of Darkness (1964).

Naipaul was accused of misogyny, and ofhaving committed acts of "chronicphysical abuse" against his mistress of 25years, Margaret Murray, who wrote in aletter to The New York Review of Books:"Vidia says I didn't mind the abuse. Icertainly did mind."[78]

Writing in The New York Review of Booksabout Naipaul in 1980, Joan Didion offeredthe following portrayal of the writer:[79]

The actual world has for

Naipaul a radiance that

diminishes all ideas of it. The

pink haze of the bauxite dust on

the first page of Guerrillas tells

us what we need to know about

the history and social

organization of the unnamed

island on which the action takes

place, tells us in one image who

runs the island and for whose

profit the island is run and at

what cost to the life of the island

this profit has historically been

obtained, but all of this implicit

information pales in the

presence of the physical fact, the

dust itself. ... The world Naipaul

sees is of course no void at all: it

is a world dense with physical

and social phenomena, brutally

alive with the complications and

contradictions of actual human

endeavour. ... This world of

Naipaul's is in fact charged with

what can only be described as a

romantic view of reality, an

almost unbearable tension

Nissim Ezekiel wrote the 1984 essay"Naipaul's India and Mine" as a reply toNaipaul's An Area of Darkness.[80]

During his first trip to Argentina, in 1972,Naipaul met and began an affair withMargaret Murray Gooding, a marriedAnglo-Argentine mother of three. Herevealed his affair to his wife one yearafter it began, telling her that he had neverbeen sexually satisfied in their

between the idea and the

physical fact ...

Personal life

relationship. In Patrick French's biography,Naipaul recounts his domestic abusetowards Margaret: "I was very violent withher for two days with my hand...Shethought of it in terms of my passion forher...My hand was swollen."[81] Frenchwrites that the "cruelty [for Naipaul] waspart of the attraction".[82] He movedbetween both women for the next 24years.[83]

In 1995, as he was traveling throughIndonesia with Gooding, his wife Patriciawas hospitalized with cancer. She died thefollowing year. Within two months of herdeath, Naipaul ended his affair with

Gooding and married Nadira Alvi, adivorced Pakistani journalist more than 20years his junior.[83] He had met her at thehome of the American consul-general inLahore.[84] In 2003, he adopted Nadira'sdaughter, Maleeha, who was then 25.[85]

Naipaul was awarded the Booker Prize forIn a Free State in 1971. He was awardedthe Trinity Cross in 1990.[86] He was alsomade a knight bachelor at the 1990 NewYear Honours. He won the Nobel Prize inLiterature in 2001.[87]

Awards and recognition

Naipaul died at his home in London on 11August 2018.[85] Before dying he read anddiscussed Lord Tennyson’s poem'Crossing the Bar' with those at hisbedside.[88] His funeral took place atKensal Green Cemetery.

Fiction

The mystic masseur. 1957.[89]

The Suffrage of Elvira  (1958)[90]

Miguel Street  (1959)

Death

Bibliography

…

A House for Mr Biswas  (1961)

Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (1963)

The Mimic Men  (1967)

A Flag on the Island  (1967)

In a Free State  (1971) – Booker PrizeWinner

Guerrillas  (1975)

A Bend in the River  (1979)

The Enigma of Arrival  (1987)

A Way in the World  (1994)

Half a Life  (2001)

The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book:And Other Comic Inventions (Stories)

(2002: collection comprising TheSuffrage of Elvira, Mr Stone and theKnights Companion and A Flag on theIsland)[91]

Magic Seeds  (2004)[91]

Non-fiction

The Middle Passage: Impressions of FiveSocieties – British, French and Dutch inthe West Indies and South America(1962)

An Area of Darkness (1964)[92]

The Loss of El Dorado  (1969)

The Overcrowded Barracoon and OtherArticles (1972)

…

India: A Wounded Civilization (1977)

A Congo Diary (1980), published bySylvester & Orphanos

The Return of Eva Perón and the Killingsin Trinidad (1980)[93]

Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey(1981)

Finding the Centre: Two Narratives (1984)[94]

A Turn in the South (1989)[91]

India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)

Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions amongthe Converted Peoples (1998)

Between Father and Son: Family Letters(1999, edited by Gillon Aitken)[91]

The Writer and the World: Essays (2002)

A Writer's People: Ways of Looking andFeeling (2007)

The Masque of Africa: Glimpses ofAfrican Belief (2010)

"Grief : a writer reckons with loss" .Personal History. The New Yorker. 95(43): 18–24. 6 January 2020.[95]

Capildeo family

See also

Notes and references

Notes1. Meaning: vidiādhar (Hindi "possessed

of learning," (p. 921) from vidyā(Sanskrit "knowledge, learning," p. 921)+ dhar (Sanskrit "holding, supporting,"p. 524)); sūrajprasād (from sūraj (Hindi"sun," p. 1036) + prasād (Sanskrit "gift,boon, blessing," p. 666)) fromMcGregor, R. S. (1993). The OxfordHindi-English Dictionary . OxfordUniversity Press.ISBN 9780198643395.

Citations1. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 –

V. S. Naipaul" . NobelPrize.org.

Archived from the original on 4 May2017. Retrieved 7 May 2017.

2. Naipaul 1987, p. 352.

3. Hayward 2002, p. 5.

4. https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/shiva-naipaul

5. "V.S. Naipaul, Who ExploredColonialism Through Unsparing Books,Dies at 85" . Retrieved 12 August2018.

�. French 2008, p. 12.

7. French 2008, p. 19: "In 1929, the yearof his marriage, Seepersad beganwork as a freelance reporter on theTrinidad Guardian, ..."

�. Hayward 2002, p. 7.

9. French 2008, pp. 36–37: "Vido spentmuch of his time at Petit Valley withPa, who would read to him andsometimes to other children: extractsfrom Julius Caesar, Nicholas Nickleby,Three Men in a Boat, ... Pa and Vidopositioned themselves in an orderedfantasy world derived from Europeanliterature. ... Aspiration and ambitionbecame the alternative to daily life ..."

10. French 2008, p. 30: "Nanie had boughta house, 17 Luis Street, in the Port ofSpain suburb of Woodbrook. ... Thiscoincided with Seepersad's recovery

from his nervous breakdown, and hissuccess in 1938 in regaining his job asa Guardian journalist. It was decidedthat the Naipaul family ... would moveto Luis Street."

11. French 2008, pp. 32–33: "The idyllcould not last. In 1940, Seepersad andDroapatie were told by Nanie that theywould be moving to a new familycommune at a place called PetitValley. ... In 1943, Seepersad couldstand it no longer at Petit Valley andthe Naipaul family moved indesperation to 17 Luis Street.

12. French 2008, pp. 40–41: "QRC wasmodelled on an English boys' publicschool, and offered a high standard ofeducation. ... He enjoyed his classes inLatin, French, Spanish and Science. Itwas a highly competitive school, withmetropolitan values. Caribbean dialectwas ironed out in favour of standardEnglish, although the studentsremained bilingual. ... "

13. French 2008, p. 90.

14. French 2008, pp. 92–93.

15. French 2008, p. 93: "When Vidia gotback to England, he was in a bad state.Trinidad was off. 'The fact is,' he

admitted, 'I spent too much money inSpain. And, during the nervousbreakdown (yes, it was that) I had, Igrew rash and reckless ... My onlyopportunity of recuperating from mypresent chaos is to remain in Englandthis summer and live very cheaply.'"

1�. Jussawalla 1997, p. 126: "At Oxford hecontinued to suffer. 'I drifted intosomething like a mental illness,' hewould write."

17. French 2008, p. 123.

1�. Naipaul 1983c.

19. Poore, Charles (5 May 1960), "MiguelStreet" Archived 26 December 2016

at the Wayback Machine The NewYork Times. Retrieved 20 June 2014.

20. French 2008, pp. 155–156.

21. French 2008, p. 161.

22. French 2008, pp. 171–172.

23. French 2008, pp. 180–181.

24. French 2008, pp. 186–187.

25. French 2008, p. 185.

2�. French 2008, p. 192.

27. French 2008, p. 193.

2�. Naipaul 1983a, p. 128.

29. Naipaul 1964, p. 252.

30. French 2008, p. 201.

31. French 2008, pp. 201–202.

32. Dooley 2006, p. 37.

33. French 2008, p. 203.

34. French 2008, p. 230.

35. Dooley 2006, p. 44.

3�. French 2008, p. 215.

37. Dooley 2006, pp. 41–42.

3�. French 2008, p. 217.

39. Dooley 2006, pp. 42–43.

40. French 2008, pp. 232–233.

41. Naipaul 1967, p. 133.

42. French 2008, p. 239.

43. French 2008, pp. 219–220.

44. French 2008, p. 240.

45. French 2008, pp. 241–242.

4�. French 2008, pp. 243–244.

47. French 2008, p. 244.

4�. French 2008, p. 247.

49. King 2003, p. 69.

50. Dooley 2006, p. 57.

51. Dooley 2006, p. 58.

52. French 2008, p. 248.

53. French 2008, p. 249.

54. French 2008, p. 250.

55. Dooley 2006, p. 55.

5�. King 2003, pp. 77–78.

57. King 2003, p. 71.

5�. Dooley 2006, p. 54.

59. Dooley 2006, p. 53.

�0. French 2008, p. 257.

�1. French 2008, p. 258.

�2. King 2003, pp. 83–84.

�3. French 2008, p. 270.

�4. King 2003, pp. 84–85.

�5. French 2008, p. 253.

��. French 2008, p. 254.

�7. French 2008, p. 255.

��. King 2003, pp. 91–92.

�9. King 2003, pp. 87–88.

70. King 2003, p. 88.

71. Smyer, Richard (Autumn 1992),"Review: A New Look at V. S. Naipaul" ,

Contemporary Literature, Vol. 33, No.3, pp. 573–581.

72. Cooke, John (December 1979), "'AVision of the Land': V,S, Naipaul's LaterNovels" , Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 25,No. 4, Caribbean Writing: CriticalPerspectives, pp. 31–47.

73. Naipaul, V. S. (25 October 1984),""Among the Republicans" , The NewYork Review of Books.

74. "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001: V.S. Naipaul (Press Release)" . SvenskaAkademien. 11 October 2001.Archived from the original on 20October 2012.

75. Meyers, Jeffrey (Spring 2011), "Review:Beyond Belief" , The Antioch Review,Vol. 69, No. 2, pp. 386–389.

7�. Greig, Geordie. "VS Naipaul: You mightnot like it, but this is Africa – exactlyas I saw it" . The London EveningStandard. Archived from the originalon 27 August 2014. Retrieved 14 June2014.

77. Said, Edward W (1 March 2002)."Edward Said on Naipaul" . Archivedfrom the original on 10 October 2007.Retrieved 10 October 2008.

7�. Murray, Margaret; Buruma, Ian;Theroux, Paul (8 May 2018). "On V.S.

Naipaul: An Exchange" . Archivedfrom the original on 27 October 2016.Retrieved 8 May 2018 – viawww.nybooks.com.

79. Didion, Joan (12 June 1980). "WithoutRegret or Hope" . The New YorkReview of Books. Archived from theoriginal on 8 September 2005.

�0. Tripathi, Salil (9 February 2004)."Commentary - Remembering theIndian poet Nissim Ezekial" . NewStatesman.

�1. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/books/review/Packer-t.html

�2. French 2008, p.97

�3. Smith, Harrison (11 August 2018)."V.S. Naipaul, Nobel winner whooffered 'a topography of the void,' diesat 85" . The Washington Post.Retrieved 12 August 2018.

�4. French, Patrick (31 March 2008)."Naipaul And His Three Women" .Outlook India. Retrieved 12 August2018.

�5. Donadio, Rachel (11 August 2018)."V.S. Naipaul, Delver of ColonialismThrough Unsparing Books, Dies at85" . The New York Times. Archivedfrom the original on 12 August 2018.Retrieved 11 August 2018.

��. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Shaftel-t.html

�7. "Nobel Prize-winning British author VSNaipaul dies aged 85" . TheIndependent. Retrieved 19 September2018.

��. Lea, Richard (11 August 2018). "VSNaipaul, Nobel prize-winning Britishauthor, dies aged 85" . The Guardian.Retrieved 11 August 2018.

�9. Filmed as The Mystic Masseur (2001).

90. "A Country Still in the Making" . NewYork Times. Retrieved 12 August 2018.

91. "V.S. Naipaul" . Pan MacMillan.Retrieved 12 August 2018.

SourcesDooley, Gillian (2006). V.S. Naipaul, Man andWriter . University of South Carolina Press.ISBN 978-1-57003-587-6. Retrieved30 September 2013.

French, Patrick (2008). The World Is What ItIs: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul .

92. "You can't read this book" . The Hindu.Retrieved 5 July 2015.

93. "From the Third World" . New YorkTimes. Retrieved 12 August 2018.

94. "The Enchantment of Vidia Naipaul" .LRB.co.uk. Retrieved 12 August 2018.

95. Online version is titled "Thestrangeness of grief".

New York: Alfred Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-27035-1. Retrieved 19 September 2013.

Hayward, Helen (2002). The Enigma of V. S.Naipaul . (Warwick University CaribbeanStudies). Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-0254-2.

Jussawalla, Feroza F., ed. (1997).Conversations with V. S. Naipaul . Univ. Pressof Mississippi. ISBN 978-0-87805-945-4.

King, Bruce (2003). V.S. Naipaul (2nd ed.).Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-4039-0456-0.

Naipaul, V. S. (1964). An Area of Darkness.

Naipaul, V. S. (1983a). "Foreword". A Housefor Mr. Biswas with a new foreword by theauthor. New York: Alfred Knopf Inc. ISBN 978-0-679-44458-9.

Also: Naipaul, V. S. (24 November1983b). "Writing A House for Mr.Biswas" . The New York Review of Books.

Also: Naipaul, V. S. (2012). "Foreword toA House of Mr. Biswas" . LiteraryOccasions. Knopf Canada. p. 186.ISBN 978-03-0-737065-5.

Also: Naipaul, V. S. (1983c). "A prologueto an autobiography". Vanity Fair.

Naipaul, V.S. (1987). The Enigma of Arrival .New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-74403-6. Retrieved 28 September 2013.

Naipaul, V.S. (2007) [2000]. Gillon Aitken(ed.). Between Father and Son: FamilyLetters . New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc.ISBN 978-0-307-42497-6. Retrieved19 September 2013.

Also: Aitken, Gillon (2007) [2000]."Introduction". In Gillon Aitken (ed.).Between Father and Son: Family Letters .New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. ISBN 978-0-307-42497-6. Retrieved 19 September2013.

Nixon, Rob (1992). London Calling: V. S.Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin . OxfordUniversity Press. ISBN 978-0-19-536196-4.Retrieved 19 September 2013.

Robertson, Jean; Connell, P. J. (rev) (2004)."Wilson, Frank Percy (1889–1963)" . OxfordDictionary of National Biography. OxfordUniversity Press. Retrieved 27 September2013.

Said, Edward W. (2000). "Bitter Dispatchesfrom the Third World" . Reflections on Exile

and Other Essays . Harvard University Press.p. 98 . ISBN 978-0-674-00302-6. Retrieved19 September 2013.

"V.S. Naipaul - Bibliography" . Nobelprize.org.Retrieved 12 August 2018.

Bayley, John (9 April 1987). "CountryLife" . The New York Review of Books.

Boxill, Anthony (1976). "The LittleBastard Worlds of VS Naipaul's TheMimic Men and A Flag on the Island" .International Fiction Review. 3 (1).

Buruma, Ian (20 November 2008)."Lessons of the Master" . The New YorkReview of Books.

Further reading

Chaubey, Ajay Kumar, ed. (2015). V. S.Naipaul: An Anthology of 21st CenturyCriticism. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers& Distributors.

Chotiner, Isaac (7 December 2012). "V.S.Naipaul on the Arab Spring, Authors HeLoathes, and the Books He Will NeverWrite" . The New Republic.

Fraser, Peter D. (2010). "Review of V.S.Naipaul: Man and Writer by GillianDooley". Caribbean Studies. Institute ofCaribbean Studies, UPR, Rio PiedrasCampus. 38 (1): 212–215.doi:10.1353/crb.2010.0027 .JSTOR 27944592 .

Gorra, Michael (2008). After Empire:Scott, Naipaul, Rushdie . University ofChicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-30476-2. Retrieved 19 September 2013.

Greenberg, Robert M. (Summer 2000)."Anger and the Alchemy of LiteraryMethod in V. S. Naipaul's PoliticalFiction: The Case of The Mimic Men".Twentieth Century Literature. 46 (2):214–237. doi:10.2307/441958 .JSTOR 441958 .

Marnham, Patrick (April 1994). "AnInterview with VS Naipaul". LiteraryReview.

Mustafa, Fawzia (1995). V. S. Naipaul:Cambridge Studies in African andCaribbean Literature . CambridgeUniversity Press. ISBN 978-0-521-48359-9. Retrieved 19 September 2013.

Naipaul, V. S. (17 October 1974)."Conrad's Darkness" . The New YorkReview of Books.

Miller, Karl (November 1967). "V. S.Naipaul and the New Order, The MimicMen". The Kenyon Review. 29 (5): 685–698. JSTOR 4334777 .

Naipaul, Shiva (1986). "Brothers". AnUnfinished Journey . London: HamishHamilton. ISBN 978-0-241-11943-3.

Naipaul, V. S. (1986). "A prologue to anautobiography". Finding the Center: TwoNarratives . Vintage Books. ISBN 978-0-394-74090-4. Retrieved 19 September2013.

Naipaul, V. S. (12 February 1987). "TheCeremony of Farewell" . The New YorkReview of Books.

Naipaul, V. S. (23 April 1987). "On Beinga Writer" . The New York Review ofBooks.

Naipaul, V. S. (31 January 1991). "OurUniversal Civilization" . The New YorkReview of Books.

Naipaul, V. S. (12 May 1994). "A Way inthe World" . The New York Review ofBooks.

Naipaul, V. S. (18 February 1999)."Reading and Writing" . The New YorkReview of Books.

Naipaul, V. S. (4 March 1999). "TheWriter in India" . The New York Review ofBooks.

Pritchard, William H. (2008). "NaipaulUnveiled: Review of The World Is What ItIs, The authorized biography of V. S.Naipaul by Patrick French". The HudsonReview. 61 (3): 431–440.JSTOR 20464886 .

Robertson, Jean; Connell, P. J. (rev)(2004). "Wilson, Frank Percy (1889–1963)" . Oxford Dictionary of NationalBiography. Oxford University Press.Retrieved 27 September 2013.

Rosen, Jonathan; Tejpal, Tarun, eds.(1998). "V. S. Naipaul, The Art of FictionNo. 154" . The Paris Review.

Singh, Bijender, ed. (2018). V.S. Naipaul:A Critical Evaluation. New Delhi: PacificBooks International.

Visaria, Pravin; Visaria, Leela (1983)."Population (1757–1947)". In DharmaKumar, Meghnad Desai (ed.). TheCambridge Economic History of India,

Volume 2, c.1757–c.1970 . CambridgeUniversity Press. ISBN 978-0-521-22802-2.

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