В честь 90-летия со дня рождения В.С. Найпола: наследие лауреата Нобелевской премии для Тринидада и Тобаго

I want to remember VS Naipaul, who was born on August 17, 1932 and died in 2018, because he is worth remembering. He is the only Nobel Prize winner that Trinidad and Tobago has produced so far; and that is something worthy of celebration, both for him as an individual writer and for T&T as his country of birth and inspiration. We have had a few Nobel Laureates in the region. Three others in fact. Sir Arthur Lewis is the only economist. The others, like Naipaul, are outstanding literary creators. Derek Walcott, poet, playwright, essayist, is St Lucian, but he lived in T&T for many years. Another is outstanding Guadeloupe poet St John Pearce. In T&T, we have some absolutely outstanding writers. We are thankful that Earl Lovelace is alive and still writing. But there are about 20 other writers in various stages of their careers, some of whom have received international recognition and awards. And then there are the many pioneers who, like Naipaul, have left their legacy behind. Samuel Selvon comes to mind immediately, as will Michael Anthony. But there are many others—Alfred Mendes, Ralph De Bossierre, Merle Hodge, Harold Sonny Ladoo, Eric Roach, CLR James, and a wealth of others. T&T, as a small country, continues to produce writers of quality, and many still are finding their way to embracing writing as a vocation, as has been happening since the literary flowering of the 1930s. In this country, we have a literary tradition, which our masters have helped to solidify and which continues. And Naipaul’s Nobel Prize means that someday, as long as we aspire and writers emerge and continue to produce, we might get another one. Because VS Naipaul has established a precedent for our country. In T&T and across the Caribbean, Naipaul is a controversial figure. Some resent his unsparing critique of post-colonial identity and his uncompromising assessments of ex-colonial societies. Others see Naipaul as having beaten all the odds of ethnic limitations and colonial marginalisation to rise as a master of English prose, who brought to the attention of the world the lives and struggles of people who never occupied a place in world literature before. Because of Naipaul’s formidable creations, people like Mohun Biswas, Mrs Tulsi, Hat, Ganesh Ramsumair, B Wordsworth and Ralph Singh have become memorable literary figures of the twentieth century. Fictional places like Elvira or Miguel Street have become real. Naipaul’s legacy remains one of the most brilliant, complex and fiercely contested achievements in twentieth-century literature. The uncompromising mastery of English prose by this colonial product is unmatched. His critical assessments of post-colonial identity and society are so daring that even elites from imperialist and colonising countries feel the need sometimes to apologise or to soften the blow. As a born-and-bred T&T Indian, in the mix of the Caribbean milieu, Naipaul found himself in a singular position, as both insider and outsider, who could reject both imperial romanticism—for instance the British delusion that democracy had come to Elvira—as well as post-colonial self-delusion, as hinted in the movement of Ganesh Ramsumair to G Ramsey Muir, and as cogently explored in the case of Ralph Singh in the Mimic Men. His legacy is neither a simple moment in literary genius, nor is it a straightforward tale of political aggression. Naipaul’s work is often a rigorous, troubling inquiry into displacement, power and the fragile mechanics of human societies, which we see being played out even in the back-and-forth of African Emancipation exchanges, even in 2026 Trinidad and Tobago. Naipaul’s legacy will endure because his work captures the foundational trauma of the modern world; the experience of being unmoored from tradition, history and home as we struggle to find anchorage. He never offers political panacea nor easy solace. Rather, he offers a clear-eyed account of the anxieties that accompany decolonisation, statehood, freedom and displacement. Quite frankly, to read Naipaul carefully today is to engage with a writer who forced literature to confront hard truths about power and identity. If you want to understand the modern world, you would do yourself a favour by reading Naipaul. Even in a world in which the terms of power are hardening during the reign of US President Donald Trump. That is why when Naipaul won the Nobel, I edited a commemorative edition of Caribbean Quarterly, courtesy that icon of culture Rex Nettleford. That is why at UWI, St Augustine, in 2007, I created the context for a VS Naipaul homecoming.