Naipaul, Sir V. S. ( Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul) (1932– ), novelist, born in Trinidad of a Brahmin family, educated in Port of Spain, and University College, Oxford. He settled in England and married in 1955. His first three books,
The Mystic Masseur (1957),
The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), and
Miguel Street (short stories, 1959), are comedies of manners, all set in Trinidad.
A House for Mr Biswas (1961), also set in Trinidad, traces the fortunes of its mild hero as he progresses from sign-writer to journalist, is trapped into marriage, but continues to bid for independence, symbolized by the house which he acquires shortly before his death.
Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (1963) was followed by
The Mimic Men (1967).
From this time Naipaul's work becomes more overtly political and pessimistic.
In a Free State (1971,
Booker Prize) explores problems of nationality and identity through three linked narratives, all describing displaced characters.
Guerrillas (1975) is a portrait of political and sexual violence in the Caribbean;
A Bend in the River (1979) is an equally horrifying portrait of emergent Africa. Naipaul's recurrent themes of political violence, innate homelessness, and alienation have given rise to comparisons with
Conrad. The autobiographical
The Enigma of Arrival (1987) describes a young Trinidadian's experience of post-imperial England. His travel books include
The Middle Passage (1962), on the Caribbean;
An Area of Darkness (1964), his controversial account of India;
The Return of Eva Peron (1980);
Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981); and
A Turn in the South (1989), about evangelical Christianity in the Southern states of the USA. Recent works include
Half a Life (2001, novel) and
The Writer and the World (2002, essays). He is the brother of S.
Naipaul. He was knighted in 1990, and won the Nobel Prize in 2001. See
Anglo-Indian literature;
Black British literature;
post-colonial literature.
