V.S. Naipaul, the novelist and Nobel laureate of Indian ancestry born in Trinidad, died last week at age 85. Much of his work involved scathing critiques of colonialism and the British Empire, but also harsh judgments of subjugated or formerly subjugated peoples themselves. He was also known for his difficult temperament and instances of misogyny--both in his fiction and in his personal life. After a childhood in Trinidad, Naipaul received a scholarship to study at Oxford University in England, where he lived for the rest of his life. His debut novel, The Mystic Masseur, was published in 1955 to some acclaim. His next novel, A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), achieved global success.
Naipaul also wrote A Bend in the River, The Middle Passage, The Mimic Men, The Enigma of Arrival, A Turn in the South, Half a Life, Miguel Street and Among the Believers, among other fiction and nonfiction works. He won the 1971 Booker Prize for In a Free State, and was knighted in 1990. In 2001, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Writing in the Guardian, Amit Chaudhuri said: "Though many of us disagree fundamentally with his views, we are beholden to what Naipaul has given us: not as members of a particular ethnicity, group, or gender, but as people, whose experience of the world flows into the experience of writing." Naipaul's novels and short story collections are available from Vintage. --Tobias Mutter
