Introducing V S Naipaul
V. S Naipaul was a writer of
British diaspora. His full name is Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, but he is
popularly known as V. S Naipaul. Naipaul was born in Trinidad on 17 August
1932. His grandparents were from India who migrated to the Caribbean Islands to
work at the sugar plantations there as indentured labourers. His father was a journalist.
Naipaul was influenced a lot by his father to become a writer as he mentioned
in A Prologue to an Autobiography. In
a vast array of novels, he dealt with his Indian origin, life in the Caribbean
Islands and issues like idea of a home, identity, race etc. Naipaul won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In A Free State. In 1989, he was awarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago's highest national honour. He received a knighthood in
Britain in 1990, and in 2001, the Nobel Prize in Literature. He breathed his last on 11 August, 2018.
Briefly introducing Naipaul’s major works:
1) The Mystic Masseur (1957): A novel about a frustrated writer of Indian origin
who later becomes a politician.
2)The Suffrage of Elvira (1958): A comic
novel describing a local election of Trinidad.
3)Miguel Street (1959): A collection of
linked short stories dealing with wartime Trinidad. This work deals with
Naipaul’s memory in the city of Port of Spain, Trinidad.
4)A House for Mr.
Biswas (1961): Narrates the story of
Mohan Biswas, an Indo-Trinidadian who was born under unfavourable condition.
After his birth, it was foretold by a Hindu pundit that he would bring bad luck
for the family. Eventually Mohan becomes the reason for his father, Raghu
Biswas’s death. Later Mohan becomes a journalist in the city of Port of Spain. The
story narrates how Moahn Biswas searches for a ‘home’ of his own for his whole
life.
5)Middle Passage:
Impressions of Five Societies (1963): A
travel account where Naipaul deals with five different societies: British,
French, Dutch, South American and societies of West Indies. This is the first
work of non-fiction by V. S Naipaul.
6)Mimic Man (1967):
Deals with the life of Ralph Singh, an Indo-Caribbean politician who at the age
of forty writes about his life as a memoir.
7)In a Free State (1971):
Naipaul won the Booker Prize for this work. It is a frame narrative of three
short stories: a) One Out of Many b) Tell Me Who To Kill c) In a Free State
8)Bend in the
River (1979): This novel deals with the problems of an unnamed African country
that has recently become independent. It is narrated through the point of view
of an African Shopkeeper. The novel starts with this immensely famous line: “The
world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become
nothing, have no place in it.”
9)Enigma of
Arrival (1987): A Novel in Five
Sections: An autobiographical work.
10)Half A Life (2001):
Narrates the life story of Willie Somerset Chandran, the son of a Brahmin
father and a Dalit mother who marries a Portuguese-African woman.
11)Magic Seeds (2004):
The sequel to Half a Life.
Naipaul details his first encounter with India in the
early 1960s. It was the first of his acclaimed Indian trilogy which includes India:
A Wounded Civilization (1977) and India: A Million Mutinies Now.
(1990) Naipaul also did a detailed study on Joseph Conrad in his essay entitled
Conrad's Darkness and Mine, where he uses Joseph Conrad's short stories and novels as a basis for
articulating his own views on narrative construction and the decline of the
novel form.
Click on the
video to watch an interview of V S Naipaul:
Read More- External Links:
Click here to buy books by V. S Naipaul from Amazon, India.
( This weekly post has been contributed by Rajarshi Nath, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Furkating College.)
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