London: Indian-origin novelist Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul passed away at his home in London on Saturday. He was 85.
Naipaul spent most of his life in Britain. He has written more than 30 books, including fiction and non-fiction, and won the Booker Prize in 1971. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2001.
Some of his works included A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival, The Loss of El Dorado, and A House for Mr Biswas.
Naipaul, fondly known as Vidia, was born in 1932 near Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He went to Oxford University on a scholarship at the age of 18.
Naipaul spent the rest of his life in England, where he carved one of the most illustrious careers in literature in the last 50 years.
He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. Naipaul’s first wife, Patricia Hale, died in 1996. Following this, the Indian-origin writer went on to marry Nadira, a Pakistani journalist.
Naipaul was famous for his biting criticism of former British PM Tony Blair, who he once described as a “pirate”, and authors Charles Dickens and EM Forster.
Naipaul had written a couple of titles in India, his country of origin. These works include ‘An Area of Darkness’, ‘A Wounded Civilisation’, and ‘India, A Million Mutinies Now’.
In his 30s, he first travelled to India. Speaking at the Jaipur Literature Festival in 2015, Naipaul had explained his reasons to travel to the country of his ancestors.
He had said, “I came to India first because of curiosity about my ancestral land. My publisher had agreed to pay me an advance for anything I would write on India. Although it was a petty amount even then I felt at peace to get it. I didn’t know how to move in India but eventually, I had to find my way.”
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