FC-0701-3, Literature and the World, Saikat

Majumdar & Anjali Prabhu, Monsoon 2020

Literary Occasions -
Personal Account by
V.S. Naipaul

By Dravisha & Yashraj

 “
“The writing that has mattered most to me is that of my father. It taught me
to look at things that had never been written about before, and seemed dull
in life, yet when transformed to paper became very surprising. A great deal
of my vision of Trinidad had come straight from my father. “

- R.A. Singh, V.S. Naipaul: A House for Mr. Biswas (Bareilly: Prakash, 1999), p-22

2
 Indian
17, August, Immigrant
1932 family, poor

Awards - Won 7 out 22

Booker Prize, exhibition
Nobel Prize, examinations,
Knighthood, Colonial
Trinity Cross education

SIR V.S. NAIPAUL

3
 About
Into the lifethis template
of Sir V.S. Naipaul

“His father decided V.S. to be a writer when
he was 3 years old.” 1
Scholarship at Oxford, influenced his
western style of writing
Contemporary writer, Style - Postcolonial
literature or commonwealth literature
Avid traveller, studied post colonial societies
India - deep rooted, talks of all facets (came
from his father and his book)
“I am profoundly Indian in my feeling,
profoundly in my sensibility—but not in my
observation." 2

1
G. Srilatha, "Finding the Center: A Critical Study" in V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Response to the Nobel Laureate, ed. Suman Bala (New
Delhi: Khosla, 2003), p. 170.
2
Lai, "Naipaul's Vision of Indian Diaspora and Trinity of Indian Travels" in V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Response to the Nobel Laureate,
p. 48.

4
 “
“Before I became secure as a writer, it was a long, unbroken period of
melancholy,” he told The New Yorker in 1994.”

- (Donadio V.S. Naipaul, Who Explored Colonialism Through Unsparing Books, Dies at
85), The New York Times

5
Cultural ethos shaping Sir Naipaul’s text

6
“Very soon I got to know that there was a
further world outside, of which our colonial
world was only a shadow. This outer world -
England principally, but also the United
States and Canada - ruled us in every way...It
sent us everything.”

- Mishra, Pankaj, editor. “Reading and Writing.” Literary

Occasions: Essays, by V.S. Naipaul, 2003, pp. 23–24.

View of children playing in the yard of the Caroni Hindu School,

Caroni County, Trinidad, Trinidad and Tobago, August 1956 3

3
Getty Images. “View of Children Playing in the Yard of the Caroni Hindu School.”
Pinterest, June 2020, www.pinterest.com/pin/493425702904695401/. [Accessed
7 06 September 2020]
A plantation ground similar
to the Ramlila ground
Naipaul grew up seeing 4

4
“Cutting Sugar Cane in Trinidad.” Wikimedia Commons,
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Cutting_Sugar_Cane_in_Trini
dad%2C_1836%2C_lithograph.jpg [Accessed 06 September 2020]
8
 “
“The colony had not been important; its past had disappeared. In some of
the guide books the humorous point was made that the colony was a place
where nothing of note had happened since Sir Walter Raleigh’s visit in
1595.”

- Mishra, Pankaj, editor. “Reading and Writing.” Literary Occasions: Essays, by V.S. Naipaul,
2003, pp. 31.
9
References

“Cutting Sugar Cane in Trinidad.” Wikimedia Commons,

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Cutting_Sugar_Cane_in_Trinidad%2C_1836%2C_lithog
raph.jpg [Accessed 06 September 2020]

Donadio, Rachel. “V.S. Naipaul, Who Explored Colonialism Through Unsparing Books, Dies at 85.” The New York
Times, The New York Times, 11 Aug. 2018,
www.nytimes.com/2018/08/11/obituaries/vs-naipaul-dead-author-nobel-prize.html.

G. Srilatha, "Finding the Center: A Critical Study" in V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Response to the Nobel Laureate, ed.
Suman Bala (New Delhi: Khosla, 2003), p. 170.

Getty Images. “View of Children Playing in the Yard of the Caroni Hindu School.” Pinterest, June 2020,
www.pinterest.com/pin/493425702904695401/. [Accessed 06 September 2020]

Lai, "Naipaul's Vision of Indian Diaspora and Trinity of Indian Travels" in V.S. Naipaul: A Literary Response to the
Nobel Laureate, p. 48.

Mishra, Pankaj, editor. “Reading and Writing.” Literary Occasions: Essays, by V.S. Naipaul, 2003

10
Thank You!

11