V. S. Naipaul
Facts
Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.
Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001
Born: 17 August 1932, Chaguanas, Trinidad and Tobago
Died: 11 August 2018, London, United Kingdom
Residence at the time of the award: United Kingdom
Prize motivation: “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories”
Language: English
Prize share: 1/1
Life
British author V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad, with family roots in India. At the age of 18, he left Trinidad for studies in the United Kingdom, where he ended up staying. Naipaul made his debut with the novel The Mysterious Masseur in 1957. Naipaul has devoted much of his life to travel in different places in the world, which has come to be reflected in his novels as well as his travel writing and reportage.
Work
At the core of many of V.S. Naipaul’s novels is colonialism and post-colonial society, where identity and alienation in a multicultural world are central themes. The novel A House for Mr. Biswas became a great success when it was published in 1961, and it also became Naipaul’s international breakthrough.
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