V.S. Naipaul is a Caribbean writer in English of Indian origin with the British location that he has deservedly earned. It is still a matter of controversy- is Naipaul an Indian or Caribbean or British writer? Naipaul himself shrugs off such a controversy by peeling off all these labels and calling himself just a writer.

In his response to the news of the Nobel Prize in 2001, however, he mentioned only India and England as the lands of his memory and despite. Similarly, at the International Festival of Indian Literature, he clarified that the omission of Trinidad was deliberate: “India has fed me, made me what I am and England is where I did my writing. I was described as Trinidad-born, and that was enough” (The book review: 26). In his literary career spread over more than five decades, he has written twenty eight books of which fourteen are non fictional works, while the other fourteen are fictional works. There is just a balance between his fictional and non fictional productions.

His literary career began when in 1950; he went to England on a scholarship to study at oxford. Naipaul considers England to be a very important place as it is there that Naipaul the writer was born. Notwithstanding this multiple diasporic itineraries of Naipaul, it is difficult to distinguish the man fro his writings because both the man and the writer are inseparably entangled in them.

As a writer Naipaul is celebrated for his works like The mystic Masseur, Miguel street, A House for Mr. Biswas, The Mimic Men, In a Free State, A Bend in the River, The Enigma of Arrival, A Way in the World, Half a Life, and his most recent Magic Seeds-all fictional works. On the other hand, The Middle Passage, An Era of Darkness, The Loss of Eldorado, India: A Wonderful Civilization, Among the Believers, Finding the Centre, A Turn in the South, Beyond belief, and India: A Million Mutinies Now are all important non-Fiction works wherein Naipaul has formidably critiqued the “Third World” societies in particular. He maps out the encounter between the old and the new civilizations and its consequences. He believes that the older civilizations of the world like India, Africa or the West indies have not adequately adapted to the modern world and its ‘universal civilization’, thereby resulting in economic, socio-political and cultural problems. His interpretations of the encounter led to controversies as well as success, because Naipaul is probably one of the most controversial and successful of the contemporary writers in English.

Article Posted By : ceorahulgonsalves  On July 11, 2012lView All Articles

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