On October 11, 2001 in reward for his long career of excellence in writing,(V)idiadhar (S)urajprasad Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in the works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".Setting aside politics and recent events, Naipaul's genius springs from the fact that he is a man whose only true country is himself. He was knighted by the Queen for services to literature. His writing blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction. He is an artist that has suffered depression and destitution to meet the demands of the high call of literature. He has been described as a 'literary circumnavigator', an outsider, a self-imposed exile.
Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932 to a family of Hindu Indian origin. He was educated at Queen's Royal College in Port-of-Spain and then received a scholarship to the University of Oxford in England. His first novelThe Mystic Masseur was published in 1957. The author of more than 20 books since, he is perhaps best known for A House for Mr. Biswas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. Recently, Beyond Belief and A Way in the World have both received considerable attention. Always the price of fame; his personal life has been under the media microscope.
Ever the lone ranger, Naipaul remained nonplussed with the publication of Paul Theroux's scathing memoir, In Sir Vidia's Shawdow. Theroux's memoir may be an accurate picture of V.S. Naipaul, who has been known to be rude, irascible, callous, cranky, unforgivable, egotistical and of course eccentric. But these are all familiar attributes of a great artist. The list reads like the very recipe for genius.
It would seem to most that a great artist would not write such a name-calling,nasty caricature after the falling out of friendship. The memoir/biography attempts to be even- handed. He recounts their friendship back when Theroux was a young writer and Naipaul was his mentor. They had a lasting friendship, until there was some kafuffle over dinner cheques, the fact that Naipaul took a mistress, and something about a book sold for $1500 cash. The result is a bitter portrait, which looks a lot like revenge, and smells like gossip.
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