Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is a Nobel Prize-winning British writer who was born in Trinidad. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad and Tobago, his bleaker later novels of the wider world, and his autobiographical chronicles of life and travels. He has published more than thirty books, both of fiction and nonfiction, over some fifty years.
Background
V. S. Naipaul, familiarly Vidia Naipaul, was born on 17 August 1932 in Chaguanas in Trinidad. He was the second child of his mother Droapatie (née Capildeo) and father Seepersad Naipaul. In the 1880s, his grandparents emigrated from India to work as farm labourers. In the Indian immigrant community in Trinidad, Naipaul's father became an English-language journalist, and in 1929 began contributing articles to the Trinidad Guardian. In 1932, the year Naipaul was born, his father joined the staff as the Chaguanas correspondent. In "A prologue to an autobiography" (1983), Naipaul describes how his father's reverence for writers and for the writing life spawned his own dreams and aspirations to become a writer.
He died from a heart attack in his forties. His mother came from a family that emigrated from India to Trinidad at the end of the nineteenth century looking for work in agriculture. In 1832, after the independence of African slaves in Trinidad, the British government found itself with a shortage of workers. As a result, they were forced to implement a system of imported labor where they brought immigrants from several countries in Asia and Africa, especially India. As a result, Trinidad, one of the Britain's Caribbean colonies, became a diverse mixture of cultures. This cultural variety became a source of inspiration for Naipaul's work.
Education
Naipaul grew in Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad. Naipaul attended the Chaguanas Government School, Tranquility Boys School in Trinidad, and Queen s Royal College, where he graduated in 1949; from there went on to study at University College in Oxford after winning a scholarship. Although missing his family during his first months at Oxford, he embraced the intellectual ferment of University College and the world of opportunities that it opened for him. As air individual, and as a writer, Naipaul maintained a strong allegiance to European intellectual traditions and to British literature and writers.
Career
He took advantage of his stay at Oxford to learn about these writers and to write as an Englishman. In addition, he became involved as a writer in the BBC's Caribbean Voices program, for which he worked as an editor after his graduation from Oxford in 1953. He also worked as a fiction reviewer for the Neiv Statesman from 1957 to 1961. Naipaul tried to return to live in Trinidad in 1956, but he found the intellectual landscape of the island dry and decided to go back to London. His rejection of Trinidad's colonial and post-colonial realities has led critics to call him "a man without a country".
Naipaul's first novel was The Mystic Masseur, which he published in 1957. It was well received by the critics but it was not recognized as either very original or as a masterpiece. It was his 1961 novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, that first brought Naipaul both recognition and praise. The autobiographical novel explores the cultural and colonial experiences of a Trinidadian family of Indian ancestry, fairly similar to his, that tries to find freedom and independence on the island. The book reflects not only the effects of British colonial influence on these individuals but also details the dynamics and conflicts created by the multiplicity of races, cultures, and traditions that came together in Trinidad.
To date, Naipaul has written 26 books, including Miguel Street (1959), El Dorado (1969), India: A Wounded Civilization (1977), A Bend in the River (1979), Among Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981), The Enigma of Arrival (1987), and Haifa Life (2001). The Caribbean theme and setting has slowly faded from his stories, and he has broadened his work to encompass fiction, social commentary, and travel writing. Some of his recent work reflects his quest for understanding India, in some ways his motherland, and also the traditions of Islam.
Achievements
Naipaul's work has been recognized throughout the world. In 1971, he won a Booker prize for his book In a Free State and in 1990 was knighted by the Queen of England. There is no doubt that the Nobel Prize in Literature is his biggest rec-ognition of all. Regardless of our individual opinions about his work, there is little controversy about his status as a formidable writer. He does not make it easy for those seeking individual explanations about him in his Nobel address he said: "I will say I am the sum of my books".
Most of his writings reveal the influences of colonial experiences on his life. His work has explicit moral values and virtues ascribed to the themes, storylines, and plots that he advocates. Some of Naipaul's themes include the cultural and psychological displacement caused by immigration, the impact of colonial rule in the process of individual and collective identity; the cultural alienation created by colonial rule; the evil effects of imperialism, the inability of post-colonial societies to thrive and flourish; and the inherent political instability and chaos that typifies post-colonial societies so that even when they have gained independence from foreign powers, their people remain politically, socially, and economically marginalized, and what is worse, enslaved.
Quotes from others about the person
Many of his critics consider him extremely pessimistic. In a recent conversation with one of Naipaul's relatives, he expressed to the author that he felt Naipaul's experiences in Great Britain had "colonialized" him. Although Naipaul calls himself a liberal, many critics and writers have criticized him for writing from a position of privilege that adversely affects his point of view. A review of biographical material available about Naipaul and a book of the letters that he exchanged with his father during his first years at Oxford suggests a more complex reality. The letters bring forth an image of Naipaul as someone who had to struggle to overcome the obstacles of colonial life. Poverty, suffering, and fear of failure were a constant presence early in his life. These elements undoubtedly led him to blame the victim rather than attacking the roots of the problems that affect colonial societies.
Connections
Married Patricia Ann Hale, January 10, 1955 (deceased 1966). Married Nadira Khannum Alvi, 1966.
