V. S. Naipaul

He met Patricia Ann Hale, a fellow student in Oxford at a college play in 1952. Their relationship was met with disapproval from the families of both yet they remained committed to each other. They got married in 1955 without the knowledge of their families and shared a happy marriage that lasted till Hale’s death in 1996.

Thereafter, he got married to a Pakistani journalist Nadira Khannum Alvi Naipaul.

VS Naipaul died on August 11, 2018, at London. He was 85.

V. S. Naipaul was born on 17 August 1932 in Chaguanas in Trinidad into a family of indentured laborers shipped from India to Trinidad. He was the second child born to Seepersad Naipaul and Droapatie.

He grew up in a largely peasant Indian immigrant community. Even though his grandparents had worked as indentured laborers, his father managed to get an education and became an English-language journalist. His father’s career as a journalist and his admiration for writers inspired Naipaul, and as a young boy he too aspired to become a writer.

In 1939, his family moved to Trinidad's capital, Port of Spain and he took admission at the government-run Queen's Royal College, in Port of Spain. V. S. Naipaul was a good student and his hard work earned him a Trinidad Government scholarship and he left the country to study at the Oxford University in 1952.

He was very confused and unsure about his future as a student at the Oxford. He tried focusing on his writing but was not satisfied with his own efforts. He felt very lonely and depressed and was on the verge of a mental breakdown.

Mentally disturbed, he embarked on an impulsive trip to Spain in 1952 and spent all his savings on the trip. The death of his father the following year was another emotional blow to him. However, one saving grace in his life was a young woman, Patricia Ann Hale, whom he had met in college. She helped him recover and rebuild his life. Both Hale and he graduated from Oxford in 1953.

V. S. Naipaul moved to London in 1954 and was hired as a presenter by Henry Swanzy, the producer of a BBC weekly program called ‘Caribbean Voices’. This was a part-time job where he also wrote short reviews and conducted interviews.

In 1955, he wrote ‘Bogart’, the first story of ‘Miguel Street’. He sent it to the publishing company André Deutsch where the owner, though reluctant to publish ‘Miguel Street’, encouraged him to write another book.

He quickly wrote a novel, ‘The Mystic Masseur’ which was accepted by André Deutsch for publication and Naipaul was paid £125 for it. Published in 1957, the novel tells the tale of an impoverished writer who aspires to become a successful politician.

He wrote a travelogue, ‘An Area of Darkness’ in 1964 in which he described his trip through India in the early sixties. It was the first of his acclaimed Indian trilogy which includes ‘India: A Wounded Civilization’ and ‘India: A Million Mutinies Now’.

The year 1979 saw the release of his highly acclaimed novel, ‘A Bend in the River’. The book is narrated by an ethnically Indian Muslim shopkeeper in an unnamed African country. The novel received critical reviews and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

His novel ‘In a Free State’ (1971) is considered one of his masterpieces. The novel consists of three short stories set in three different countries, each exploring the concept of freedom and the price one has to pay for it.

His novel ‘Half a Life’ (2001), which tells the tale of a fictional character, Willie Somerset Chandran, the son of a Brahmin father and a Dalit mother, who immigrates to England and then Africa borrows considerably from Naipaul’s own life as the son of immigrant Indians.