Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born in a small town in Trinidad into a family of Indian Brahmin origin.

His father, Seepersad Naipaul, was a correspondent for the Trinidad uardian. He also published short stories. !hen Naipaul was si" the family mo#ed to $ort of Spain, the capital. Seepersad Naipaul died of a heart attac% in &'() without witnessing the success of his son as a writer. He had encouraged Naipaul in his writing aspirations, telling him in a letter* +,on-t be scared of being an artist. ,. H. .awrence was an artist through and through/ and, for the time being at any rate, you should thin% as .awrence. 0emember what he used to say, -1rt for my sa%e.-+ 1t the age of &2 he had written his first no#el which was rejected by the publisher. Naipaul was educated at 3ueen-s 0oyal 4ollege, $ort of Spain, and in &'(5 he won a scholarship to 6"ford. In &'7', after ha#ing some pictures of himself ta%en for his application to the uni#ersity, Naipaul wrote to his elder sister* +I ne#er %new my face was fat. The picture said so. I loo%ed at the 1siatic on the paper and thought that an Indian from India could loo% no more Indian than I did... I had hoped to send up a stri%ing intellectual pose to the 8ni#ersity people, but loo% what they ha#e got.+ 1fter a ner#ous brea%down he tried to commit suicide, but luc%ily the gas meter ran out. !hile at 6"ford he met $atricia Hale/ they married in &'((. She died in &'99 and Naipaul married Nadira 1l#i, a di#orced $a%istani journalist. 6n graduation Naipaul started his career as a freelance writer. ,uring this period Naipaul felt himself rootless, but found his #oice as a writer in the mid:&'(5s, when he started to e"amine his own Trinidadian bac%ground. ;rom &'(7 to &'(9 Naipaul was a broadcaster for the BB4-s 4aribbean Voices, and between the years &'(< and &'9& he was a regular fiction re#iewer for the New Statesman. Naipaul published his first boo%s in the late &'(5s, but they did not ma%e much money for him or his publisher, 1ndr= ,eutsch .imited. Howe#er, he %new his #alue as a writer and refused to write a re#iew for The Times Literary Supplement for their usual fee. >I 8?. ST0??T @&'('A was a farewell to $ort of Spain, Trinidad. The colorful characters of the s%etches include Bogart, who got his name from the film 4asablanca, B. !ordsworth who sells his poetry for four cents, and >an:man who in a real mystery to the people of >iguel Street. The narrator is a boy who grows up, starts to earn his own money and finally goes abroad to study. +I left them all and wal%ed bris%ly towards the aeroplane, not loo%ing bac%, loo%ing only at my shadow before me, a dancing dwarf on the tarmac.+ In later wor%s Naipaul ga#e up comedic tones but in &'95 4harles $oore could write in his re#iew of the boo%* +1 comparison with +$orgy and Bess+ has been suggested. The parallel has at least the merit of reminding us that the whole world is one. In that hospitable mood we might also remember >ar% Twain-s tales of life on the >ississippi. But >iguel Street, in Trinidad, is not really #ery much li%e 4atfish 0ow, nor are reminders of nineteenth:century >issouri pre#alent. !hat is true and, if you will, significant about >r. Naipaul-s boo% is that it presents a world of its own e"cellently.+ @The New York Times, >ay (, &'95A In &'9& appeared 1 H68S? ;60 >0 BIS!1S, often regarded as his masterpiece, which tells the tragicomic story of the search for independence and identity of a Brahmin Indian

li#ing in Trinidad. The protagonist, >ohun Biswas, was partly modelled after the author-s father. Naipaul has said about this character and his father* +>y father was a profounder man in e#ery way. 1nd his wounds are deeper than the other man can say. It-s based on him, but it couldn-t be the real man.+ Biswas has been unluc%y from his birth, but all he wants is a house of his own : it is the solid basis of his e"istence. The story, which fuses social comedy and pathos, follows his struggle in #ariety of jobs, from sign painter to journalist, to his final triumph. .ater Naipaul returned to his father in B?T!??N ;1TH?0 1N, S6N @&'''A, a record of their correspondence in the early &'(5s. In &'9& Naipaul recei#ed a grant from the Trinidad go#ernment to tra#el in the 4aribbean. His first non:fiction boo% was TH? >I,,.? $1SS1 ? @&'9BA, in which he described his first re#isiting of the !est Indies. Its e"amination of racial tensions made blac% !est Indians call Naipaul a -racist.- ;rom the wide period of tra#els in the &'95s and early &'<5s in India, South:1merica, 1frica, Iran, $a%istan, >alaysia and the 8S1, Naipaul produced among others IN,I1* 1 !68N,?, 4IVI.IC1TI6N @&'<<A, and 1 B?N, IN TH? 0IV?0 @&'<'A, a pessimistic no#el about 1frica, proclaiming the corruptibility of man%ind. The story is set in a country #ery li%e CaDre or 8ganda. Salim, the narrator is a >uslim, whose family, Indian traders, has li#ed in 1frica hundreds of years. Salim sets up a shop in a town on the bend of the ri#er and gains success, which has no future in a country ruled by the Big >an, president for life. 1gain Naipaul-s protagonist is an outsider, who realiEes that his way of life is almost at its end and e#entually he must gi#e up e#erything. +The bush runs itself. But there is no place to go,+ says Selim-s friend ;erdinand, when he rescues Selim from a jail. +The bush+ is Naipaul metaphor for the country and the whole third world. +1frica has no culture,+ Naipaul has said. ,ere% !alcott, the !est Indian poet who won the Nobel priEe for literature in &''B, noted* +If Naipaul-s attitude toward Negroes, with its nasty little sneers... was turned on Fews, for e"ample, how many people would praise him for his fran%nessG+ Since &'(5 Naipaul has li#ed in Britain, but tra#eled e"tensi#ely. His essays and tra#el writings are often negati#e, unsentimental e"plorations of !est Indian society as in TH? >I,,.? $1SS1 ? @&'9BA. +The steel band used to be regarded as a high manifestation of !est Indian culture, but it was a sound I detested.+ 1>6N TH? B?.I?V?0S* 1N IS.1>I4 F680N?H @&'2&A was accused by >uslim readers of narrow and selecti#e #ision of Islam. Naipaul searches the sources of the new Islam : and the ideological rage. +Islam sanctified rage : rage about the faith, political rage* one could be li%e the other. 1nd more than once on this journey I had met sensiti#e men who were ready to contemplate great con#ulsions.+ @from Among the BelieversA Naipaul-s latest tra#el boo%s include B?H6N, B?.I?;* IS.1>I4 ?I480SI6NS 1>6N TH? 46NV?0T?, $?6$.?S @&''2A, intimate portraits from his journeys to the non:1rab Islamic countries of Indonesia, Iran, $a%istan, and >alaysia. Naipaul tries to understand the fundamentalist fer#our that ha#e mar%ed the !estern image of the region. +There probably has been no imperialism li%e that of Islam and the 1rabs,+ he writes. In Iran he meets war #eterans, who e"press their disillusionment and their sense of being manipulated by the mullahs, and in Indonesia he meets his former friend, who opposed the Suharto regime, and later became an establishment figure, an ad#ocate of an Islamicist future. 6n his first #isit to India since he was awarded the Nobel $riEe, Naipaul said* +!e are not here to celebrate the antiJuity of literature in India, but to celebrate modern writing.+

In his semi:autobiographical no#el TH? ?NI >1 6; 100IV1. @&'2<A Naipaul depicts a writer of 4aribbean origin, who finds joys of homecoming in ?ngland after wandering years : during which world stopped being a colony for him. 4entral themes in Naipaul-s wor%s are damaging effects of colonialism upon the people of the Third !orld, but he doesn-t belie#e in the imported ideas of re#olutionaries or the ability of the former colonies to a#oid mista%es made by the !estern consumer societies. 1s a writer he has been compared to Foseph 4onrad because of similar pessimistic portrayal of human nature and the themes of e"ile and alienation. +Barbarism in India is #ery powerful because it has a religious side,+ he once stated. In the essay -4onrad-s ,ar%ness- @pub. in TH? 0?T80N 6; ?V1 $?06N, &'25A Naipaul sees his own bac%ground as +one of the 4onradian dar% places of the earth.+ In the &''5s Naipaul concentrated on non:fiction. In &''7 appeared his long:awaited no#el, 1 !1H IN TH? !60.,, an autobiography and a fictional history of colonialism, presenting stories from the times of Sir !alter 0aleigh to the nineteenth:century re#olutionary ;ranciso >iranda. In H1.; 1 .I;? @B55&A the protagonist is !illie Somerset 4handran, born in India in the &')5s. His second name he has got from the ?nglish writer Somerset >augham, who has met his father. !illie mo#es to .ondon, drifts in bohemian circles, publishes a boo%, marries 1na, a woman of mi"ed 1frican descent, and mo#es with her to 1frica, to her family estate. !illie has problems to come in terms with himself, as the son of a Brahman, who has married an +untouchable.+ His father is a rebel who ends at a monastery. !illie rebels against his own bac%ground and the wishes of his father, with whom he has more in common than he admits. In his wife-s home country, in which colonial system is brea%ing down, !illie is also an outsider. 1fter eighteen years he decides to lea#e her, and find his true identity. He has li#ed half a life, a shadow life, but Naipaul doesn-t tell will happen to him. !illie-s e"istential search continues and the rest of his story is left open. !illie-s decision parallels with the history of the relationship between the 1merican writer $aul Therou" and Naipaul. Therou" depicted his decades long friendship with Naipaul in Sir Vidia's Shadow @&''2A. In this angry and unforgi#ing boo% Therou" e#entually is rejected by Naipaul and he realiEes he has come out Naipaul-s shadow, he is free. Therou" considered earlier the older writer as his mentor but the friendship ended in brea%up, which Therou" sealed with his bitter accusations. +I had admired his talent. 1fter a while I admired nothing else. ;inally I began to wonder about his talent, seriously to wonder, and doubted it when I found myself s%ipping pages in his more recent boo%s. In the past I would ha#e said the fault was mine. Now I %new that he could be the monomaniac in print that he was in person.+ @from Sir Vidia's ShadowA : 1mong Naipaul-s se#eral literary awards is the Boo%er $riEe for IN 1 ;0?? ST1T? @&'<&A. He was %nighted in &'2' and in &'') he won the first ,a#id 4ohen British .iterature $riEe for +lifetime achie#ement by a li#ing British writer+. Naipaul-s manuscripts and e"tensi#e archi#es ha#e been deposited in the 8ni#ersity of Tulsa. http*KKwww.%irjasto.sci.fiK#naipaul.htm