V. S. Naipaul, The Art of Fiction No. 154
The Paris Review Subscribe V. S. Naipaul , The Art of Fiction No. 154 Interviewed by Jonathan Rosen & Tarun Tejpal Issue 148, Fall 1998 Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 in Chaguanas, Trinidad, where his ancestors had emigrated from India—his maternal grandfather, at the turn of the century, had traveled from that country as an indentured servant. Naipaul, in his essay “Prologue to an Autobiography” from Finding the Center , has written: “Half a writer’s work . . . is the discovery of his subject. And a problem for me was that my life had been varied, full of upheavals and moves: from grandmother’s Hindu house in the country, still close to the rituals and social ways of village India; to Port of Spain, the negro, and G.I. life of its streets, the other, ordered life of my colonial English school, which is called Queen’s Royal College, and then Oxford, London and the freelances’ room at the BBC. Trying to make a beginning as a writer, I did...