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Sir
Vidiadhar
Surajprasad
Naipaul
TC
known
as
Vidia
Naipaul
or
V.
S.
Naipaul,
was
a
British
writer
who
won
the
2001
Nobel
Prize
for
Literature.
He
was
born
in
Trinidad
in
a
family
with
Indian
roots,
resided
in
England
as
an
adult,
and
traveled
across
and
wrote
about
India,
Africa,
the
Islamic
world,
and
South
and
North
America
in
his
novels
and
non-fiction
works.
He
is
known
for
his
comic
early
novels
set
in
Trinidad
and
Tobago,
his
bleaker
later
novels
of
the
wider
world,
and
his
autobiographical
chronicles
of
life
and
travels.
He
published
more
than
thirty
books,
both
of
fiction
and
nonfiction,
over
some
fifty
years.
Naipaul
was
born
on
17
August
1932
in
Chaguanas,
Trinidad
and
Tobago.
He
was
the
second
child
of
Droapatie
Capildeo
and
Seepersad
Naipaul.
His
younger
brother
was
the
writer
Shiva
Naipaul.
In
the
1880s,
his
grandparents
had
migrated
from
India
to
work
as
indentured
labourers
on
the
sugar
plantations.
In
the
Indian
immigrant
community
in
Trinidad,
Naipaul's
father
became
an
English-language
journalist,
and
in
1929
began
contributing
articles
to
the
Trinidad
Guardian.
In
1932,
the
year
Naipaul
was
born,
his
father
joined
the
staff
as
the
Chaguanas
correspondent.
In
'A
prologue
to
an
autobiography'
(1983),
Naipaul
describes
how
his
father's
reverence
for
writers
and
for
the
writing
life
spawned
his
own
dreams
and
aspirations
to
become
a
writer.
Naipaul
in
his
2001
Nobel
Prize
lecture
Two
worlds,
speculated
that
he
may
be
paternally
linked
to
Nepal:
Naipaul's
mother
came
from
a
prosperous
family.
In
1939,
when
he
was
six
years
old,
Naipaul's
family
moved
in
with
them
in
a
big
house
in
Trinidad's
capital,
Port
of
Spain.
There,
Naipaul
enrolled
in
the
government-run
Queen's
Royal
College,
a
well-regarded
school
that
was
modelled
after
a
British
public
school.
Upon
graduation,
Naipaul
won
a
Trinidad
Government
scholarship
that
allowed
him
to
study
at
any
institution
of
higher
learning
in
the
British
Commonwealth;
he
chose
Oxford.
At
University
College,
Oxford,
Naipaul's
early
attempts
at
writing,
he
felt,
were
contrived.
Lonely
and
unsure
of
his
ability
and
calling,
he
became
depressed.
In
April
1952,
he
took
an
impulsive
trip
to
Spain,
where
he
quickly
spent
all
he
had
saved.
He
called
his
impulsive
trip
'a
nervous
breakdown'.
Thirty
years
later,
he
called
it
something
like
a
mental
illness.
Sir
Vidiadhar
Surajprasad
Naipaul
TC
known
as
Vidia
Naipaul
or
V.
S.
Naipaul,
was
a
British
writer
who
won
the
2001
Nobel
Prize
for
Literature.
He
was
born
in
Trinidad
in
a
family
with
Indian
roots,
resided
in
England
as
an
adult,
and
traveled
across
and
wrote
about
India,
Africa,
the
Islamic
world,
and
South
and
North
America
in
his
novels
and
non-fiction
works.
He
is
known
for