Vidiadhar(Vidyadhar) Surajprasad Naipaul is of Indian ancestory. He was born in Trinidad which has a large Indian population. He is now a British citizen.
"It is a great tribute to England, my home, and to India, home of my ancestors and to the dedication and support of my agent Gillon Aitken." said Naipaul when he won the Nobel prize.
Naipaul, long rumored as a Nobel candidate, is the first writer of Indian descent to win since Rabindranath Tagore in 1913. He said receiving the prize was a ``tribute both to India, my ancestors' land, and to other countries in the subcontinent.''
Naipaul, 69, was born in Trinidad to parents of Indian descent. Naipaul - who writes in English - is also famous for writing A House For Mr Biswas and A Bend In The River.
The 69-year-old novelist and short story writer, who left Trinidad at the age of 18, presents impressions of the country of his ancestors, India, and critical assessments of Muslim fundamentalism in non-Arab countries like Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Pakistan in two well-known works, according to the citation.
In a recent interview, he mocked E.M. Forster, author of A Passage to India'' and other novels.He just knew the court and a few middle-class Indians and a few garden boys whom he wished to seduce,'' Naipaul told the Literary Review. He also took on James Joyce's Ulysses,'' saying thatJoyce was going blind and I can't understand the work of a blind writer.''
His most famous book, at least for the Indian audience, A House for Mr Biswas followed, putting him on the fast track to literary greatness.
The press release described the book thus: "One of those singular novels that seem to constitute their own complete universes, in this case a miniature India on the periphery of the British Empire, the scene of his father's circumscribed existence.
Some of the selected works of V S Naipaul:
India : A Wounded Civilization. London: Deutsch, 1977.
India: A Million Mutinies Now. London: Heinemann, 1990.
A House for Mr. Biswas. London: Deutsch, 1961.