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| '''] Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul''', commonly, '''V. S. Naipaul''', ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|n|aɪ|p|ɔː|l}} or {{IPAc-en|n|aɪ|ˈ|p|ɔː|l}}; b. 17 August 1932) is a ] writer born and raised in ] to which his grandfather had emigrated from ] as an ]. Naipaul is known for the wistfully comic early novels of Trinidad, the bleaker thematically expansive later novels of the wider world, and the vigilant chronicles of his travels and life, all written in his trademark, widely admired, prose style. | '''] Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul''', commonly, '''V. S. Naipaul''', ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|n|aɪ|p|ɔː|l}} or {{IPAc-en|n|aɪ|ˈ|p|ɔː|l}}; b. 17 August 1932) is a ] writer born and raised in ] to which his grandfather had emigrated from ] as an ]. Naipaul is known for the wistfully comic early novels of Trinidad, the bleaker thematically expansive later novels of the wider world, and the vigilant chronicles of his travels and life, all written in his trademark, widely admired, prose style. | ||
| ⚫ | Patricia Ann Hale, whom Naipaul married in 1955, served until her death 41 years later as first reader, editor, and critic of his writings. To her, in 2011, Naipaul dedicated his breakthrough novel, ], of a half-century before. | ||
| In 2001, V. S. Naipaul was awarded the ].<ref name="nobelweb">{{cite web|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001|publisher=Nobelprize.org}}</ref> | In 2001, V. S. Naipaul was awarded the ].<ref name="nobelweb">{{cite web|url=http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2001/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001|publisher=Nobelprize.org}}</ref> | ||
| ⚫ | Patricia Ann Hale, whom Naipaul married in 1955, served until her death 41 years later as first reader, editor, and critic of his writings. To her, in 2011, Naipaul dedicated his breakthrough novel, ], of a half-century before. | ||
| == |
==Early life== | ||
| Naipaul was born in ], Trinidad and Tobago, to parents of Indian descent.<ref name=BBCdescent>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/1836230.stm|title=Naipaul's anger at Indian writers|work=BBC News|publisher=BBC|date=22 February 2002|accessdate=22 February 2002}}</ref> He is the son, older brother, uncle, and cousin of published authors ], ], ], and ], respectively. His current wife is ], a former ]i journalist. | |||
| V. S. Naipaul, familiarly Vidia, was born on 17 August 1932 in the small town of ], Trinidad and Tobago. He was the second child and first son born to mother Dropatie Devi and father ]. A half-century earlier, his paternal grandfather had emigrated from India—from a village in the ] in the lower ]—to work as an ] in the sugar plantations near Chaguanas. During that same time, their prospects ravaged by the ], many Indians had emigrated to other outposts of the British Empire, such as ], ], and ], where, although slavery had been abolished, slave labor was still in demand. | |||
| Naipaul was married to the ] Patricia Hale for 41 years, until her death from cancer in 1996. According to an authorized biography by ], the two shared a close relationship when it came to Naipaul's work—she was an unofficial editor for him—but the marriage was not a happy one.<ref name=DTadmits>{{cite news|first=Nigel|last=Reynolds|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1582389/Sir-Vidia-Naipaul-admits-his-cruelty-may-have-killed-wife.html|title=Sir Vidia Naipaul admits his cruelty may have killed wife|work=The Daily Telegraph|location=UK|date=27 March 2008|accessdate=27 March 2008}}</ref> He had a long-term abusive affair with a married woman, Margaret Gooding, of which his wife was aware.<ref>{{cite news|first=Patrick|last=French|url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/donotmigrate/3672030/Sex-truth-and-Vidia-Patrick-Frenchs-biography-of-VS-Naipaul.html|title=Sex, truth and Vidia: Patrick French's biography of VS Naipaul|work=The Daily Telegraph|location=UK|date=22 March 2008|accessdate=22 July 2009}}</ref> | |||
| Prior to his wife's death, Naipaul proposed to Nadira Naipaul, a divorced Pakistani journalist, born Nadira Khannum Alvi. They were married two months after his wife died, at which point Naipaul also abruptly ended his affair with Gooding. Nadira Naipaul had worked as a journalist for the ], ''The Nation'', for ten years before meeting Naipaul. She was divorced twice, and has two children from a previous marriage, Maliha Naipaul and Nadir.<ref>{{cite news|author=Balbir K. Punj|url=http://www.hvk.org/articles/0103/315.html|title=There was life before Islam|work=The Asian Age|date=21 January 2003|accessdate=21 January 2003}}</ref> | |||
| She is the sister of Maj Gen (Retd) ], a former chief of the Special Service Group – Pakistan Army, who was later assassinated during the ].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.indianexpress.com/news/expak-army-officer-served-as-lakhvis-adviser-report/446884/|title=Ex-Pak Army officer served as Lakhvi's adviser: Report|work=The Indian Express|date=14 April 2009|accessdate=14 April 2009}}</ref> | |||
| Naipaul insists that his writing transcends any particular ideological outlook, remarking that "to have a political view is to be prejudiced. I don't have a political view." His supporters often see him as offering a mordant critique of many liberal pieties. His detractors, such as cultural critic ] and poet ], accuse him of being a neo-colonial apologist.<ref>{{cite news|first=Geoffrey|last=Wheatcroft|url=http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200202/wheatcroft|title=A Terrifying Honesty: V. S. Naipaul is certainly no liberal—and herein lies his importance|work=The Atlantic|date=February 2002}}</ref> He has also excoriated ] as a "pirate" at the head of "a socialist revolution", a man who was "destroying the idea of civilisation in this country" and had created "a plebeian culture".<ref>{{cite news|first=Geoffrey|last=Wheatcroft|url=http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/v-s-naipaul-scourge-of-the-liberals-664440.html|title=V S Naipaul: Scourge of the liberals|work=The Independent|location=London|date=4 August 2001|accessdate=27 May 2010}}</ref> | |||
| In March 2002, ] denounced Naipaul for supporting the ]-, ]- and ]-led Indian government on the anti-Muslim ]. Rushdie said Naipaul was "a fellow traveller of fascism and disgraces the Nobel award".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/mar/09/society.salmanrushdie|title=Religion, as ever, is the poison in India's blood: Salman Rushdie on new horrors in the name of God|work=The Guardian|date=9 March 2002|accessdate=9 March 2002}}</ref> | |||
| Naipaul is a strict vegetarian.<ref>http://www.tehelka.com/story_main.asp?filename=fe010704farrukh.asp</ref> | |||
| ===Women=== | |||
| Naipaul attracted media controversy with statements about women he made in a May 2011 interview at the ], expressing his view that women's writing was inferior to men's, and that there was no female writer whom he would consider his equal. Naipaul stated that women's writing was "quite different", reflecting women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". He had previously criticised leading female Indian authors writing about the legacy of colonialism for the "banality" of their work.<ref>{{cite news|first=Amy|last=Fallon|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/02/vs-naipaul-jane-austen-women-writers|title=VS Naipaul finds no woman writer his literary match – not even Jane Austen. Nobel laureate says there is no female author whom he considers his equal|work=The Guardian|date=2 June 2011|accessdate=2 June 2011}} His views generated wide criticism from writers and literary experts all over the world. As, Shashi Deshpande rightly pointed out 'All writers know that literature is not a matter of competition'. Reference: </ref> | |||
| ==Reception== | |||
| In awarding Naipaul the 2001 ], the ] praised his work "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories." The Committee added, "Naipaul is a modern '']'' carrying on the tradition that started originally with '']'' and '']''. In a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony." The Committee also noted Naipaul's affinity with the novelist ]: | |||
| {{bquote|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.}} | |||
| His fiction and especially his travel writing have been criticised for their allegedly unsympathetic portrayal of the Third World. ], for example, argues that Naipaul "allowed himself quite consciously to be turned into a witness for the Western prosecution", promoting what Said classifies as "colonial mythologies about ]s and darkies".<ref>{{cite web|first=Edward W|last=Said|url=http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/caribbean/naipaul/said.html|title=Edward Said on Naipaul|date=1 March 2002|accessdate=10 October 2008|archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/20071010132752/http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/landow/post/caribbean/naipaul/said.html|archivedate=10 October 2007}}</ref> Said believes that Naipaul's worldview may be most salient in the author's book-length essay '']'', which Naipaul composed after returning to the Caribbean after ten years of exile in England, and the work ''].'' | |||
| Writing in '']'' about Naipaul, ] offers the following portrayal of the writer:<ref>{{cite news |first=Joan|last=Didion|url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/7366|title=Without Regret or Hope|date=12 June 1980|work=The New York Review of Books}}</ref> | |||
| {{bquote|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 between the idea and the physical fact...}} | |||
| In 1998 a controversial memoir by Naipaul's sometime protégé ] was published. The book provides a personal, though occasionally caustic portrait of Naipaul. The memoir, entitled ''Sir Vidia's Shadow'', was precipitated by a falling-out between the two men a few years earlier.{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} Theroux supposedly blamed Naipaul's second wife, Nadira Naipaul, for driving the two apart.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/84193810.html?dids=84193810:84193810&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Oct+12%2C+2001&author=MARJORIE+MILLER&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=The+World%3B+V.S.+Naipaul+Receives+Nobel+for+Literature&pqatl=google|title=The World; V.S. Naipaul Receives Nobel for Literature|first=Marjorie|last=Miller|date=12 October 2001|work=]|accessdate=21 September 2011}}</ref> | |||
| In 2002, Kris Rampersad released ''Finding A Place'', a ground breaking study that gives context to much of Naipaul's perspectives on colonialism, the Caribbean and Trinidad and Tobago, placing his writings within the context of some 200 years' gestation in Trinidad and its peculiar social, economic, political and literary evolution. She argues that the society's complex oral and literary antecedents propelled his acclamation as a 20th-century Lord of the English language and that his, and his predecessors including his father Seepersad Naipaul, legislator/authors as F.E.M Hosein, Dennis Mahabir, and near contemporaries as Samuel Selvon and Ismith Khan's early experiences of journalism on the island influenced their leanings towards expanding the literary tradition in social realism tradition. Naipaul himself credited this work in a meeting with Rampersad on his visit to Trinidad in 2007, acknowledging that ''Finding a Place'' revealed aspects of writings by his father. In early 2007, V. S. Naipaul made a long-awaited return to his homeland of Trinidad. He urged citizens to shrug off the notions of "Indian" and "African" and to concentrate on being "Trinidadian".{{Citation needed|date=September 2011}} In 2008, writer Patrick French released the first authorised biography of Naipaul, which was serialised in '']''.<ref name=DTadmits /><ref>{{cite news|title=A Delicate Look at a Prickly Man|first=Thomas|last=Meaney|url=http://articles.latimes.com/2008/nov/11/entertainment/et-book11|date=12 November 2008|accessdate=26 January 2009|work=Los Angeles Times}}</ref> | |||
| ==Awards== | |||
| He has been awarded numerous other literary prizes, including the ] (1958), the ] (1960), the ] (1964), the ] (1968), the ] (1971), the ] (1983) and the ] for a lifetime's achievement in ] (1993). He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the ] in 1990.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter N|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterN.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences|accessdate=4 June 2011}}</ref> | |||
| ], writing in '']'' in 2001, described Naipaul as "a master of modern English prose".<ref>] (2001). ''The New York Review of Books''. Quote: "Naipaul is a master of English prose, and the prose of ''Half a Life'' is as clean and cold as a knife."</ref> In 2008, '']'' ranked Naipaul seventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".<ref>{{cite news|url=http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3127837.ece|title=The 50 greatest British writers since 1945|work=The Times|date=5 January 2008|accessdate=1 February 2010|location=London}}</ref> | |||
| ==Bibliography== | ==Bibliography== | ||
| ;Fiction | ;Fiction | ||
| Line 97: | Line 67: | ||
| * '']'' (1989) | * '']'' (1989) | ||
| * '']'' (1990) | * '']'' (1990) | ||
| * ''Homeless by Choice'' (1992, with ] and ]) | |||
| * ''Bombay'' (1994, with Raghubir Singh) | |||
| * '']'' (1998) | * '']'' (1998) | ||
| * ''Between Father and Son: Family Letters'' (1999, edited by Gillon Aitken) | * ''Between Father and Son: Family Letters'' (1999, edited by Gillon Aitken) | ||
| * ''Reading & Writing: A Personal Account'' (2000) | |||
| * '']'' (2002) | |||
| * ''Literary Occasions: Essays'' (2003, by Pankaj Mishra) | |||
| * '']'' (2007) | |||
| * ''The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief'' (2010)<ref>{{cite news|first=Thomas|last=Meaney|url=http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/017_03/6354|title=Blood Animus:V. S. Naipaul looks at Africa through its indigenous religions|work=Book Forum|date=September/October/November 2010}}</ref> | |||
| ==Further reading== | ==Further reading== | ||
| * Athill, Diana (2000) ''Stet. An Editor's Life'' (Grove Press) | * Athill, Diana (2000) ''Stet. An Editor's Life'' (Grove Press) | ||
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| Sir V. S. Naipaul TC | |
|---|---|
| Born | Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932-08-17) 17 August 1932 (age 92) Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago |
| Occupation | Novelist, travel writer, essayist |
| Nationality | Trinidadian, British |
| Genre | Novel, Essay |
| Notable works | A House for Mr. Biswas A Bend in the River The Enigma of Arrival In a Free State |
| Notable awards | Booker Prize 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 |
| Spouse | Patricia Ann Hale Naipaul (1955 - 1996) Nadira Khannum Alvi Naipaul (1996 - present) |
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, commonly, V. S. Naipaul, (/ˈnaɪpɔːl/ or /naɪˈpɔːl/; b. 17 August 1932) is a British writer born and raised in Trinidad to which his grandfather had emigrated from India as an indentured servant. Naipaul is known for the wistfully comic early novels of Trinidad, the bleaker thematically expansive later novels of the wider world, and the vigilant chronicles of his travels and life, all written in his trademark, widely admired, prose style.
In 2001, V. S. Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Patricia Ann Hale, whom Naipaul married in 1955, served until her death 41 years later as first reader, editor, and critic of his writings. To her, in 2011, Naipaul dedicated his breakthrough novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, of a half-century before.
Early life
V. S. Naipaul, familiarly Vidia, was born on 17 August 1932 in the small town of Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago. He was the second child and first son born to mother Dropatie Devi and father Seepersad Naipaul. A half-century earlier, his paternal grandfather had emigrated from India—from a village in the North-Western Provinces in the lower Gangetic Plain—to work as an indentured servant in the sugar plantations near Chaguanas. During that same time, their prospects ravaged by the Great Famine of 1876–1878, many Indians had emigrated to other outposts of the British Empire, such as Fiji, Guyana, and Suriname, where, although slavery had been abolished, slave labor was still in demand.
Bibliography
- Fiction
- The Mystic Masseur (1957) - film version: The Mystic Masseur (2001)
- The Suffrage of Elvira (1958)
- Miguel Street (1959)
- 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 Prize
- 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)
- 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)
- The Return of Eva Perón and the Killings in Trinidad (1980)
- Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981)
- Finding the Centre (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)
Further reading
- Athill, Diana (2000) Stet. An Editor's Life (Grove Press)
- Schutte, Gillian (2010) Behind Sir Vidia’s Masque: The Night the Naipauls Came to Supper (Book Southern Africa).
- Girdharry, Arnold (2004) The Wounds of Naipaul and the Women in His Indian Trilogy (Copley).
- Barnouw, Dagmar (2003) Naipaul's Strangers (Indiana University Press).
- Dissanayake, Wimal (1993) Self and Colonial Desire: Travel Writings of V.S. Naipaul (P. Lang).
- French, Patrick (2008) The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V. S. Naipaul (Random House)
- Hamner, Robert (1973). V.S. Naipaul (Twayne).
- Hammer, Robert ed. (1979) Critical Perspectives on V.S. Naipaul (Heinemann).
- Hayward, Helen (2002) The Enigma of V.S. Naipaul: Sources and Contexts (Macmillan).
- Hughes, Peter (1988) V.S. Naipaul (Routledge).
- Jarvis, Kelvin (1989) V.S. Naipaul: A Selective Bibliography with Annotations, 1957–1987 (Scarecrow).
- Jussawalla, Feroza, ed. (1997) Conversations with V.S. Naipaul (University Press of Mississippi).
- Kelly, Richard (1989) V.S. Naipaul (Continuum).
- Khan, Akhtar Jamal (1998) V.S. Naipaul: A Critical Study (Creative Books)
- King, Bruce (1993) V.S. Naipaul (Macmillan).
- King, Bruce (2003) V.S. Naipaul, 2nd ed (Macmillan)
- Kramer, Jane (13 April 1980) From the Third World, an assessment of Naipaul's work in the New York Times Book Review.
- Levy, Judith (1995) V.S. Naipaul: Displacement and Autobiography (Garland).
- Nightingale, Peggy (1987) Journey through Darkness: The Writing of V.S. Naipaul (University of Queensland Press).
- Said, Edward (1986) Intellectuals in the Post-Colonial World (Salmagundi).
- Theroux, Paul (1998) Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship across Five Continents (Houghton Mifflin).
- Theroux, Paul (1972). V.S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Work (Deutsch).
- Weiss, Timothy F (1992) On the Margins: The Art of Exile in V.S. Naipaul (University of Massachusetts Press).
References
- Cite error: The named reference
BBCdescentwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001". Nobelprize.org.
External links
- Nobel Lecture: Two Worlds at NobelPrize.org
- Appearances on C-SPAN
- V. S. Naipaul on Charlie Rose
- V. S. Naipaul at IMDb
- Template:Worldcat id
- V. S. Naipaul collected news and commentary at The New York Times
- Template:Nndb
- Template:Dmoz
- Jonathan Rosen, Tarun Tejpal (Fall 1998). "V. S. Naipaul, The Art of Fiction No. 154". The Paris Review.
- Editing Vidia, Diana Athill, Granta, a memoir of Naipaul by his editor
- A literary Brown Sahib
Categories:
- Use dmy dates from August 2011
- 1932 births
- Living people
- Alumni of University College, Oxford
- Booker Prize winners
- British Nobel laureates
- British novelists
- British people of Indo-Trinidadian descent
- British travel writers
- Critics of Islam
- David Cohen Prize recipients
- John Llewellyn Rhys Prize winners
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
- Honorary Fellows of University College, Oxford
- Knights Bachelor
- Nobel laureates in Literature
- Postcolonial literature
- Trinidad and Tobago emigrants to the United Kingdom
- Trinidad and Tobago Hindus
- Trinidad and Tobago journalists
- Trinidad and Tobago Nobel laureates
- Trinidad and Tobago novelists
- Trinidad and Tobago people of Indian descent
- Trinidad and Tobago writers
- Travel writers
- Wesleyan University faculty
- Jerusalem Prize recipients
- 20th-century British novelists
- 21st-century British novelists