V. S. Naipaul (1932-2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer, who is famous for his works of fiction and nonfiction in English. This esteemed writer is renowned for his early comedic novels that take place in Trinidad, as well as for his darker works that include the theme of detachment. Over the span of five decades, he has published over thirty books. His famous fictional works include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now. However, V. S. Naipaul passed away on Saturday, August 11, 2018.
Contents
Wiki/Biography
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on Wednesday, 17 August 1932 (age 85 years at the time of death) in the sugar plantation town of Chaguanas on the island of Trinidad in the British crown colony of Trinidad and Tobago. V. S. Naipaul’s family moved to Trinidad’s capital Port of Spain, permanently when he was nine. V. S. Naipaul attended the Queen’s Royal College (QRC), Trinidad from 1942 to 1950. The school was designed based on the structure of British public schools for boys and was renowned for its exceptional academic achievements. V. S. Naipaul was awarded a Trinidad Government scholarship to study overseas before he turned 17, which served him the opportunity to choose any institution of higher learning within the British Commonwealth. However, he decided to pursue an English degree at Oxford University. V. S. Naipaul reluctantly enrolled for a B. Litt. post-graduate degree at Oxford in English Literature. In December 1953, he failed his first B.Litt. exam. However, his viva voce in February 1954 did not go as expected, resulting in him failing the B.Litt. degree overall. In August 1956, Naipaul returned on TSS Cavina to Trinidad for a two-month stay with his family.
VS Naipaul in the 1960s
Family & Caste
He belonged to a Capildeo family. With the genealogy compiled by the Naipauls in Trinidad, the family were recognized as Hindu Brahmins.
Parents & Siblings
V. S. Naipaul’s father, Seepersad Naipaul, was an English-language journalist. He started writing stories for the Trinidad Guardian, the oldest daily newspaper, in 1929 and became a correspondent for the Chaguanas province in 1932. In early 1953, Naipaul’s father had a coronary thrombosis and lost his job at the Guardian in the summer. In October 1953, Seepersad Naipaul died. During the 1880s, V. S. Naipaul’s paternal grandfather migrated from British India in order to work as an indentured labourer on a sugar plantation. He had a younger brother, Shiva Naipaul, who was a novelist, and journalist. Shiva died in 1985 at the age of 40.
Seepersad Naipaul, father of V.S.Naipaul
Wife & Children
In 1952, V. S. Naipaul met Patricia Ann Hale, a history student, at a college play. They both graduated in June 1953 and got married in January 1955. Unfortunately, she died in 1996. In the same year, V. S. Naipaul married Nadira Khannum Alvi, who is a Pakistani journalist. Nadira’s second marriage was to Iqbal Shah, by whom she had a daughter Maleeha, whom V. S. Naipaul later adopted.
V.S. Naipaul and his first wife, Patricia Hale
V. S. Naipaul with his second wife, Nadira Naipaul
Relationships/Affairs
On a trip to Argentina, in 1972, V. S. Naipaul met Margaret Murray Gooding, a married Anglo-Argentine mother of three. He revealed his affair with Margaret Murray Gooding to his wife after a year. He continued it for the next 24 years. In Patrick French’s biography, V. S. Naipaul recounts his abusive behaviour towards Margaret Murray Gooding,
I was very violent with her for two days with my hand … She thought of it in terms of my passion for her … My hand was swollen. French writes that the “cruelty was part of the attraction.”
In 1995, when V. S. Naipaul first wife Patricia Ann Hale was hospitalized due to cancer, he was travelling through Indonesia with Margaret Murray Gooding. She died in 1996. Within two months of her death, V. S. Naipaul ended his affair with Margaret Murray Gooding and married Nadira Khannum Alvi, a divorced Pakistani journalist, who was more than 20 years younger than him. He had met her at the home of the American consul-general in Lahore. In 2003, he adopted Nadira’s daughter, Maleeha, who was then 25 years old.
Naipaul and his lover, Margaret Murray Gooding
Career
Henry Swanzy, the producer of BBC’s weekly program Caribbean Voices, offered V. S. Naipaul a renewable three-month contract as the presenter of the show in December 1954. In early 1961, Dr. Eric Williams, the Premier of Trinidad and Tobago, invited V. S. Naipaul to visit and to write a book on Caribbean history, which later published as The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies – British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America (1962). Naipaul wrote a monthly Letter from London for the Illustrated Weekly of India from 1963 to 1965. V. S. Naipaul served as writer-in-residence at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and finished his novel The Mimic Men. In late 1964, V. S. Naipaul was asked to write an original script for an American movie. He spent the next few months in Trinidad writing the story, a novella named, “A Flag on the Island,” later published in the collection, A Flag on the Island. In 1998, he published Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples, a portrayal of the Islamic faith in the lives of ordinary people in Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Half a Life (2001) is a novel about an Indian immigrant to England and then Africa. There are several fiction and non-fiction works he wrote,
Fiction
- The Mystic Masseur (1957)
- The Suffrage of Elvira (1958)
- A House for Mr Biswas (1961)
- Mr Stone and the Knights Companion (1963)
- A Flag on the Island (1967)
- A Bend in the River (1979)
- The Enigma of Arrival (1987)
- A Way in the World (1994)
- Magic Seeds (2004)
Non-fiction
- The Middle Passage: Impressions of Five Societies – British, French and Dutch in the West Indies and South America (1962)
- An Area of Darkness (1964)
- The Loss of El Dorado (1969)
- The Overcrowded Barracoon and Other Articles (1972)
- India: A Wounded Civilization (1977)
- A Congo Diary (1980), published by Sylvester & Orphanos
- The Return of Eva Perón and the Killings in Trinidad (1980)
- Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981)
- Finding the Centre: Two Narratives (1984)
- A Turn in the South (1989)
- India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990)
- Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples (1998)
- Between Father and Son: Family Letters (1999, edited by Gillon Aitken)
- The Writer and the World: Essays (2002)
- A Writer’s People: Ways of Looking and Feeling (2007)
- The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (2010)
Awards, Honours, Achievements
- Naipaul was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State in 1971.
- In 1983, he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize.
- He was awarded the Trinity Cross in 1990.
- In the New Year Honours of 1990, he was awarded the title of Knight Bachelor.
- He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.
V.S.Naipaul receiving the Nobel Prize from King Carl XIV
V. S. Naipaul with the Nobel prize
Death
V. S. Naipaul died at his home in London on 11 August 2018. Before dying he read and discussed Lord Tennyson’s poem Crossing the Bar with those at his bedside. His funeral took place at Kensal Green Cemetery.
Facts/Trivia
- In 1984, Nissim Ezekiel, an Indian-Jewish poet, wrote the essay ‘Naipaul’s India and Mine’ as a reply to Naipaul’s ‘An Area of Darkness’.
- Fouad Ajami disagreed with Naipaul’s argument in his book Beyond Belief that Islam is a form of Arab imperialism that erases other cultures. Ajami highlighted the variety of Islamic practices found throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
- Naipaul’s ‘A Prologue to an Autobiography’ (1983) recounts how Seepersad’s deep admiration for writers and the writing profession inspired his eldest son’s ambitions and aspirations.
- In his foreword to the 1983 Alfred A. Knopf edition of the book, Naipaul was to write,
I had more than changed flats: for the first time in my life I enjoyed solitude and freedom in a house. And just as, in the novel, I was able to let myself go, so in the solitude of the quiet, friendly house in Streatham Hill I could let myself go. … The two years spent on this novel in Streatham Hill remain the most consuming, the most fulfilled, the happiest years of my life. They were my Eden.”
- In 2011, on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A House for Mr Biswas, he dedicated the book to his late wife Patricia Anne Hale, who had died in 1996.
Categories: Biography
Source: vcmp.edu.vn