V.S. Naipaul is the most compelling literary figure of the last fifty years. Producing,uniquely, masterpieces of both fiction and non-fiction, his is a gift born of a forceful,visionary impulse. With great feeling for his formidable body of work, and exclusive access to his private papers and personal recollections, Patrick French has produced a luminous and astonishing account of this enigmatic genius.
V.S. Naipaul is the most compelling literary figure of the last fifty years. Producing,uniquely, masterpieces of both fiction and non-fiction, his is a gift born of a forceful,visionary impulse. With great feeling for his formidable body of work, and exclusive access to his private papers and personal recollections, Patrick French has produced a luminous and astonishing account of this enigmatic genius.
Naipaul was born in Trinidad, into an Indian family. French examines early privations,Naipaul's life within a displaced community and his talent and fierce ambition at school,which won him a scholarship to Oxford at the age of seventeen. He describes how, once in England, homesickness and depression struck with great force, and the ways in which Naipaul, supported by his first wife, overcame his 'double exile', culminating in the production of early masterpieces such as A House for Mr Biswas, An Area of Darkness and In a Free State.
Through the uncertainties of life in London, and later in Wiltshire, Naipaul and his wife were to stay together for over four decades, even after he embarked on an intense,twenty-four-year love affair. As his reputation grew, as prizes and accolades were bestowed, as a second wave of breathtaking creation generated A Bend in the River,Among the Believers and The Enigma of Arrival, Naipaul found and sustained an extraordinary position both outside and at the centre of literary culture.
Researched with the full cooperation of its Nobel prize-winning subject, Patrick French traces with a sympathetic brilliance and devastating insight the roots cf V.S. Napaul's unparalleled gift, in what will become a landmark in biography.
List of Illustrations ix
Introduction xi
PART ONE
One: The New World 3
Two: In The Lion House 14
Three: 'Like Oliver Twist In The Workhouse' 29
Four: To The Mother Country 47
Five: 'De Portu Hispaniensi In Trinitatis Insula' 67
Six: 'I Love You, My Dear Pat' 91
Seven: To The Empty House 109
Eight: 'They Want Me To Know My Place' /28
Nine: 'Something Rich Like Chocolate' 144
Ten: Back To The New World 165
Eleven: 'He Asked For 10 Gns!!' 183
Twelve: 'There Wasn't Any Kind Remark' 137
PART TWO
Thirteen: The Homecoming 2/9
Fourteen: 'Lovely Vogue, Just Bought' 236
Fifteen: The Schintsky Method 257
Sixteen: The World 276
Seventeen: 'With The Aid Of A Cutlass Blade' 301
Eighteen: Margarita 311
Nineteen: England and Argentina 329
Twenty: The Marriage Of Mandrax And Valium 349
Twenty-One: 'I Want To Win And Win And Win' 367
Twenty-Two: A House For Mr Naipaul 390
Twenty-Three: 'Undoing My Semi-Colons' 420
Twenty-Four: Arise, Sir Vidia 445
Twenty-Five: The Second Lady Naipaul 472
Acknowledgements 501
Notes 503
Index 537