V. S. Naipaul

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Naipaul had been considered by the Nobel committee for many years. He was nominated in 1973 by committee member Artur Lundkvist, and according to another member, Anders Österling, Naipaul was a contender for the prize the following year. On awarding Naipaul the prize, the Swedish Academy singled out his book The Enigma of Arrival (1987) for particular praise, calling it "an unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture and the decline of European neighbourhoods." Other contenders tipped to be in the running for the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature included Israel's Amos Oz, South Africa's J. M. Coetzee (awarded in 2003), Canada's Margaret Atwood and America's Philip Roth. The choice of Naipaul caused mixed reactions. In the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet professor Sture Linnér praised Naipaul's writing: "He is one of the greatest, not just in our generation but on the whole in modern literature." In the same newspaper, critic Mats Gellerfelt heavily criticised the decision, arguing that Naipaul had his best time as a writer long behind him, a "postcolonial literature's favourite grandad," and pointed out three superior candidates: Antonio Lobo Antunes, Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Fuentes. British author Martin Amis praised the choice: "His level of perception is of the highest, and his prose has become the perfect instrument for realising those perceptions on the page," adding that Naipaul's travel writing "is perhaps the most important body of work of its kind in the second half of the century."

Reader's Guide

Naipaul delivered his Nobel Lecture entitled Two Worlds at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on 7 December 2001. At the award ceremony on 10 December 2001, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said: "Naipaul has been praised for writing the best English in the market, and that may well be, but his view of style is reminiscent of Stendahl’s [sic], who believed a writer has failed if the reader remembers the words he has written: what should remain are his ideas." Engdahl added: "Decay and disappearance are a fundamental theme in Naipaul’s writings – but without grief, rather as something that makes existence bearable. The English landscape that he discovers in The Enigma of Arrival is the ruin of an age of greatness, and at last he feels at home!"

In the heart of many of Naipaul's works, colonialism and post-colonial society are the main settings, and the key themes are alienation and identity in a heterogeneous society. His other well-known literary prose include A Flag on the Island (1967), The Mimic Men (1967), In a Free State (1971), Guerrillas (1974). The Committee noted that "in a vigilant style, which has been deservedly admired, he transforms rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony."

Did You Know?

• Naipaul was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories."
• The Swedish Academy called Naipaul "Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense."
• Naipaul's novel A House for Mr Biswas (1961) was described as an enormous hit and his big break on the world stage.
• Naipaul delivered his Nobel Lecture entitled Two Worlds at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on 7 December 2001.
• The Academy singled out The Enigma of Arrival (1987) for particular praise, calling it "an unrelenting image of the placid collapse of the old colonial ruling culture."