Nobel Laureate V.S. Naipaul, whose fiction chronicled the results of colonialism in the modern era, died late on Saturday at his home in London, according to his U.S. publisher, Knopf. He was 85.
The Trinidadian-born author of Indian ancestry lived his adult life in England, where, after graduating from Oxford on scholarship, he wrote the powerful but polarizing books on migration and empire that eventually won him the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature. His first book, the comic novel The Mystic Masseur, was published in 1957, and adapted to film in 2001. His final work, The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, which was nonfiction and published in 2010, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.
The Loss of El Dorado, a work of nonfiction and Naipaul’s first book with Knopf, was published in 1970. It was followed by another 20 books, including Guerillas (1975), A Bend in the River (1979), and Among the Believers (1981). Naipaul was awarded the Nobel following the publication of Half a Life, which also received a starred PW review. His most famous novel, the autobiographical A House for Mr. Biswas, was published in 1961.
