VS Naipaul, the Nobel Prize-winning Indian origin writer died on August 11, aged 85. The news was confirmed by his wife Lady Nadira Khannu Alvi Naipaul early Sunday (Indian Standard Time).
Naipaul, whose most famous work is A House for Mr Biswas, is considered one of the greatest - if not the greatest English writers of the modern era.
Here are some things to know about him
1) VS Naipaul was born Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul on August 17, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinandad and Tobago. His grandparents had moved to Trinidad and Tobago in the 1880s.
2) Naipaul's father, Sreepersad Naipaul, was an English journalist and contributed to the Trinidad Guardian. In his autobiography, Naipaul describes how his "father's reverence for writers spawned his own dreams and aspirations to become a writer."
3) Naipaul won a scholarship to study in Oxford after winning a scholarship from the Trinidad government
4) At Oxford, Naipaul said he felt lonely, and this lonliness manifested into an impulsive trip to Spain in 1952, where he spent all his money. He later termed this period as 'mental illness.' Before this trip, he met his first wife Patricia Ann Hale at a play. They were married in 1955 till her death in 1996.
5) In the same year, he married Nadira Khannum Alvi, a Pakistani journalist, two months after the Patricia's death.
6) In 1971, Naipaul won the Man Booker Prize for his book In a Free State. Naipaul also won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2001
7) He was knighted in 1989
8) One of his seminal novels was the "A House for Mr Biswas" (1961), which looked at the almost impossible task for Indian immigrants in the Caribbean of trying to integrate into society while keeping hold of their roots.
With PTI Inputs
