Sunday, 4 February 2018

On Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul


V. S. Naipaul is a British novelist and travel writer of Indian and Trinidadian descent, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.

Influences on Naipaul: One author Naipaul has publicly cited as an influence is Joseph Conrad, another British immigrant (from Poland) whose novels forced the British, and the world, to examine the disturbing implications of empire.

Critics have noted that the dark, brooding atmosphere, tropical settings, and alienated perspective in Naipaul’s prose resemble similar qualities in Conrad’s writing, including the latter’s most famous work of fiction, Heart of Darkness (1899).

As in that work, some of Naipaul’s European characters come emotionally undone as their pretensions are exposed in the alien African setting. A Bend in the River bears direct comparison with Heart of Darkness in the journey each work’s protagonist undertakes. However, some critics have interpreted Naipaul’s work as a defense of the colonial project rather than an indictment of its bitter consequences.

Literature of Displacement: Naipaul has contributed richly to the body of modern literature dealing with the theme of displacement, exile, and rootlessness, as dealt with by major authors such as James Joyce, Albert Camus, Ezra Pound, Vladimir Nabokov, Milan Kundera, and Conrad.

This theme is embodied in characters such as Salim in A Bend in the River, an Indian Muslim living in Africa who is treated like an outsider during his country’s political upheaval. It is also shown in the story ‘‘One out of Many’’ from In a Free State, in which an Indian servant finds himself in New York and realizes he is utterly lost regarding matters of money and law in the strange land.

In the late 1950s, the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, once colonies of the British Empire, began the process of becoming an independent nation. In his first four novels, culminating in A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), Naipaul drew on his Trinidadian background and current events for subject matter.

A House for Mr. Biswas marks a turning point for Naipaul. Many critics regard A House for Mr. Biswas as Naipaul’s first masterpiece. In 1998, The Modern Library listed the work among the finest one hundred novels written in English.

Reader’s Guide to the Novel: A House for Mr. Biswas follows the life of Mr. Mohun Biswas, a protagonist inspired by Naipaul’s father, as he struggles to find his freedom and a house of his own.

The son of a poor laborer in Trinidad, Mr. Biswas is forced to live as a guest in one crowded, inhospitable house after another. After his father dies, his family moves in with his mother’s sister, Tara, and he is humiliated and beaten by Tara’s brother-in-law Bhandat.

Mr. Biswas vows, "I am going to get a job on my own. And I am going to get my own house too. I am finished with this" [p. 64].

He goes to work as a sign-painter for the Tulsi family, and there he begins a flirtation with Shama.

After his love letter is discovered by Mrs. Tulsi, Mr. Biswas is bullied into marrying Shama, thus beginning a long and unhappy marriage that produces four children, a constant struggle for money, and countless bitter quarrels. After a brief and failed attempt to run a dry goods store in The Chase, Mr. Biswas and his family return to live with the Tulsi family, a pattern that recurs thoughout the novel.

It is in Port of Spain that Mr. Biswas comes closest to happiness, working as a journalist for the tabloid Sentinel, writing outlandish stories, and achieving a degree of local fame. Here, too, his son Anand excels in school and shows signs of talent as a writer. But Mr. Biswas’s fortunes suffer several reversals, and it is not until the very end of his life that he is finally able to buy a house–only to find the experience much different than he had imagined.

A vivid portrait of a man who fights to free himself from the entanglements of family, custom, and religion, A House for Mr. Biswas is also an unforgettable look inside colonial society at the beginnings of great transition.


- Gale/Routledge/Britannica 

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