V.S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.
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His novels includeĀ A House for Mr Biswas,Ā The Mimic Men,Ā Guerrillas,Ā A Bend in the River, andĀ The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize forĀ In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, includeĀ Among the Believers,Ā Beyond Belief,Ā The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India:Ā An Area of Darkness,Ā India: A Wounded CivilizationĀ andĀ India: A Million Mutinies Now.
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In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He died in 2018.