Sir V. S.
Naipaul
Sir
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in Chaguanas,
Trinidad, on 17 August 1932. He was educated at Queen's Royal College, Trinidad, and, after winning
a government scholarship, in England at University
College, Oxford. He worked briefly for
the BBC as a writer and editor for the 'Caribbean
Voices' programme. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
His first three books are comic portraits of Trinidadian
society. The Mystic Masseur (1957) won the Mail on
Sunday/John Llewellyn
Rhys Prize in 1958 and was adapted as a film
with a screenplay by Caryl Phillips in 2001. Miguel
Street (1959),
a collection of short stories, won a Somerset
Maugham Award. His acclaimed novel A House for Mr Biswas (1961), is based on
his father's life in Trinidad.
Subsequent novels developed more political themes
and he began to write about colonial and post-colonial
societies in the process of de-colonisation.
Awards
-
V. S. Naipaul was knighted in 1989.
-
The
Mystic Masseur (1957) won the Mail on Sunday/John
Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 1958.
-
His first novel set in England, Mr Stone and the Knights
Companion (1963), won the Hawthornden Prize.
-
The
Mimic Men (1967), won the 1968 WH Smith
Literary Award.
-
In a
Free State (1971), won the Booker Prize for Fiction.
-
He was awarded the David Cohen
British Literature Prize by the Arts Council of
England in 1993.
-
He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.
Books
V. S. Naipaul is
also the author of a number of works of non-fiction
including books about India. Some of his books are as
following.
· An Area of Darkness (1964),
· India: A Wounded Civilization (1977),
· India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990),
· Among the Believers: An Islamic
Journey (1981)
· Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions (1998).
· The Middle Passage: Impressions of
Five Societies - British, French and Dutch in the West
Indies and South America (1962)
· The Loss of El Dorado: A History (1969),
Collections
of essays
· The Overcrowded Barracoon and Other
Articles (1972)
· The Return of Eva Peron (1980).
· The Writer and the World: Essays (2002).
His latest book, Literary Occasions (2004),
is a further collection of essays.
