He has authored more than twenty books, including fiction and nonfiction works.
Naipaul received the Nobel Prize in 2001, the Booker Prize in 1971, and a knighthood in 1990.
He resides in Wiltshire, England.
Books by V. S. Naipaul
Nonfiction:
Between Father and Son: Family Letters
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
India: A Million Mutinies Now
A Turn in the South
Finding the Center
Among the Believers
The Return of Eva Perón (with The Killings in Trinidad)
India: A Wounded Civilization
The Overcrowded Barracoon
The Loss of El Dorado
An Area of Darkness
The Middle Passage
Fiction:
Half a Life
A Way in the World
The Enigma of Arrival
A Bend in the River
Guerrillas
In a Free State
A Flag on the Island
The Mimic Men
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion
A House for Mr. Biswas
The Suffrage of Elvira
The Mystic Masseur
Contents of Miguel Street
Bogart
The Thing Without a Name
George and the Pink House
His Chosen Calling
Man-Man
B. Wordsworth
The Coward
The Pyrotechnician
Titus Hoyt, I.A.
The Maternal Instinct
The Blue Cart
Love, Love, Love, Alone
The Mechanical Genius
Caution
Until the Soldiers Came
Hat
How I Left Miguel Street
1. BOGART
Hat would shout across to Bogart every morning: “What happening there, Bogart?”
Bogart mumbled in response: “What happening there, Hat?”
The name Bogart was given to him by Hat, possibly influenced by the movie Casablanca.
Before being called Bogart, he was called Patience because he played that card game.
Bogart was always sitting on his bed with cards and looked bored and superior.
He made a pretence of being a tailor and had a sign made.
Sign said: TAILOR AND CUTTER Suits made to Order Popular and Competitive Prices
Bogart bought a sewing machine and chalks, but never made a suit.
Popo, the carpenter, was similar, always working but never making furniture, calling his work “the thing without a name.”
Bogart made many friends and was considered smart, giving them solace and comfort.
One morning, Bogart disappeared without a word, causing silence and sorrow.
Hat and his friends used Bogart’s room as a club house, gambling and drinking.
Bogart returned after months, finding Eddoes and a woman in his room.
Bogart simply asked them to move over so he could sleep.
Bogart drank heavily upon his return and spoke more than usual, alarming his friends.
He claimed he had a job on a ship, deserted in British Guiana, became a cowboy, smuggled goods into Brazil, and ran a brothel in Georgetown before being arrested.
Bogart became more like his namesake from the films, while Hat imitated Rex Harrison.
Bogart became feared in the street, drinking, swearing, gambling, and wearing a hat with the brim pulled low.
He disappeared again for four months, returning fatter and more aggressive with a pure American accent.
He became expansive towards children, giving them money and advice.
The third time he returned, he threw a party for the children and was arrested by Sergeant Charles for bigamy.
Hat discovered he had a wife in Tunapuna and another in Caroni, whom he had to marry after giving her a baby.
Bogart had left the wife from Caroni to be a man among men.
2. THE THING WITHOUT A NAME
Popo, the carpenter, only built his workshop, which remained unfinished.
He was always busy hammering, sawing, and planing.
The narrator enjoyed watching him work and liked the smell of the woods.
When asked what he was making, Popo always said, “the thing without a name.”
The narrator decided to make an egg-stand and Popo laughed.
The narrator's mother used it for a week and then forgot about it.
Popo made the narrator paint a sign for him as well.
The sign said: BUILDER AND CONTRACTOR Carpenter And Cabinet-Maker signed by the narrator.
Popo wasn’t sure about announcing himself as an architect and wasn't sure about the spelling.
Popo liked standing in front of the sign, but panicked when people came to inquire.
The carpenter fellow? Popo would say. He don’t live here again.
Popo was a talkative man, discussing serious topics with the narrator.
Popo wasn’t popular because Hat thought he was too conceited.
Popo dipped his middle finger in rum in the mornings and licked it.
Popo said it made him feel good to stand in the sun and have some rum.
Popo’s wife worked, as he believed men weren’t meant to work.
Hat considered Popo a man-woman and not a proper man.
Popo’s wife cooked in a big house and would give the narrator food.
She introduced the narrator to the gardener, who loved his flowers and gave the narrator grass for his mother’s hens.
One day, Popo’s wife was missing, and Popo was sad in his workshop.
Popo said: “Your auntie gone, boy.”
Popo found himself a popular man.
Popo’s workshop was silent, and the sawdust turned black.
Popo drank a lot, smelled of rum, cried, grew angry, and wanted to beat up everybody.
This made him an accepted member of the gang.
Hat said, ‘We was wrong about Popo. He is a man, like any of we.
Popo was not really happy; the friendship came too late.
Popo wasn’t interested in other women.
Popo said: “Boy, when you grow old as me, you find that you don’t care for the things you thought you woulda like if you coulda afford them.
Popo left, and Hat assumed he was looking for his wife.
Popo beat up the gardener in Arima who had taken his wife away.
Popo had to pay a fine for assaulting the gardener.
A calypso was made about Popo, becoming the road-march for Carnival.
When Popo returned, he growled at the narrator, and the old noises from his workshop started again.
He ran an electric light to the workshop and began working in the night-time.
Vans stopped outside his house and were always depositing and taking away things.
Then Popo began painting his house.
He used a bright green, and he painted the roof a bright red.
Hat said, ‘The man really mad.’ And added, ‘Like he getting married again.
Popo returned with his wife.
Hat commented that women wanted the new house and furniture, not the man.
Popo returned to his old way of living, making “the thing without a name.”
He had stopped working, and his wife got her job with the same people near the narrator's school.
People in the street were almost angry with Popo when his wife came back.
Sympathy had been wasted.
Hat was saying, ‘That blasted Popo too conceited, you hear.
Popo said, ‘Boy, go home and pray tonight that you get happy like me.’
Popo was stealing things and remodelling them.
Even the paint and the brushes with which he had redecorated the house had been stolen.
Hat: ‘That man too foolish. Why he had to sell what he thief? Just tell me that. Why?’
Popo was sent to jail.
Emelda never left Miguel Street.
She kept her job as cook and started taking in washing and ironing.
He came back as a hero.
For the narrator, Popo had changed and it made him sad.
When I asked him, ‘Mr Popo, when you going start making the thing without a name again?’ he growled at me. ‘You too troublesome,’ he said. ‘Go away quick, before I lay my hand on you.’
3. GEORGE AND THE PINK HOUSE
The narrator feared George more than Big Foot.
George was short and fat, with a grey moustache and big belly, always muttering and cursing.
His house was a broken-down wooden building, painted pink, with a rusty roof.
The inside walls had never been painted and were grey and black with age.
No curtains, no pictures on the wall.
George let his wife do all the work in the house and yard.
George’s wife was always in the cow-pen.
George never became one of the gang in Miguel Street.
He beat his wife, son, and daughter.
Hat said, ‘That boy Elias have too much good mind.'
One day Bogart said, ‘Ha! I mad to break old George tail up, you hear.’
The narrator began to be terrified of George, particularly when he bought two Alsatian dogs and tied them to pickets at the foot of the concrete steps.
Every morning and afternoon when the narrator passed his house, he would say to the dogs, ‘Shook him!’
The narrator pretended not to hear George mumbled things until he was almost in tears.
Hat said, ‘The fat old man does call me horse-face.’
Elias said, ‘Boy, my father is a funny man. But you must forgive him. What he say don’t matter. He old. He have life hard. He not educated like we here. He have a soul just like any of we, too besides.’
Elias’s mother died, and had the shabbiest and the saddest and the loneliest funeral Miguel Street had ever seen.
The narrator felt a little sorry for George.
The Miguel Street men held a post-mortem outside Hat’s house.
‘He did beat she too bad.’
Boyee said, ‘The person I really feel sorry for is Dolly. You suppose he going to beat she still?
Elias dropped out of our circle.
George was very sad for the first few days after the funeral.
He drank a lot of rum and went about crying in the streets, beating his chest and asking everybody to forgive him and to take pity on him, a poor widower.
George sold all his cows to Hat.
Hat said, ‘God will say is robbery.’
George was away from Miguel Street for a week.
During that time we saw more of Dolly.
Someone in the street (not me) poisoned the two Alsatians.
George came back, still drunk, but no longer crying or helpless, and he had a woman with him.
This woman took control of George’s house.
Hat: ‘She look like a drinker sheself.’
Two weeks later she leave him, you ain’t hear?’
The pink house, almost overnight, became a full and noisy place.
There were many women about, talking loudly and not paying too much attention to the way they dressed.
Hat said, ‘That man George giving the street a bad name, you know.’
Bogart became friendly with the new people and spent two or three evenings a week with them.
Elias had a room of his own which he never left whenever he came home.
George was still drinking a lot; but he was prospering.
He was wearing a suit now, and a tie.
Hat said, ‘He must be making a lot of money, if he have to bribe all the policemen and them.
George wasn’t attempting to be nice in return either. He remained himself.
‘Dolly ain’t have no mooma now. I have to be father and mother to the child. And I say is high time Dolly get married.’
His choice fell on a man called Razor.
Hat didn’t like Dolly marrying Razor. \she ain’t giggling, you know. She crying really.’
Dolly and Razor were married at church and they came back to a reception in the pink house.
George spoke out: ‘Dolly, you married, it true. But don’t think you too big for me to put you across my lap and cut your tail.’
An American sailor waved his hands drunkenly and shouted, ‘You could put this girl to better work, George.’
The women began to disappear and the numbers of jeeps that stopped outside George’s house grew smaller.
‘You gotta be organised,’ Hat said.
George was living alone in his pink house.
He looked old and weary and very sad.
He died soon afterwards.
Hat and the boys got some money together and we buried him at Lapeyrouse Cemetery.
Elias turned up for the funeral.
4. HIS CHOSEN CALLING
After midnight there were two regular noises in the street: sweepers and scavenging-carts
Boys wanted to be cart-drivers
Cart-driving was prestigious because:
The men were aristocrats.
They worked early, then had the day free.
They were always going on strike.
They struck for minor reasons.
Eddoes, a driver, was admired, saying his father was the best
Cart-driving a family skill passed on father to song
The Narrator wanted to sweep in front of his house. However, Eddoes came and wanted to take the broom from me.
When we who formed the Junior Miguel Street Club squatted on the pavement, talking, like Hat and Bogart and the others, about things like life and cricket and football, I said to Elias, ‘So you don’t want to be a cart- driver? What you want to be then? A sweeper?’
Elias said he wanted to be a doctor
Errol asked Elias if, when he becomes a doctor, he will forget them. Elias said no.
Elias began going to school at the other end of Miguel Street. Looked like a house but was a school.
Sign outside said: TITUS HOYT, I.A. (London, External) Passes in the Cambridge School Certificate Guaranteed
Odd that George was proud of Elias learning a lot, although he beat him.
The year before his mother died, Elias sat for the Cambridge Senior School Certificate.
Results came out in March. Elias FAIL.
Elias left and began living with Titus Hoyt.
One day in the following March, Titus Hoyt says Elias passed the Cambridge Senior School Certificate.
They talked about everything but books, and Elias, too, was talking about things like pictures and girls and cricket.
Elias sat the exam a 2nd time because he wanted a 2nd grade so he could be a docter. Elias says 'Is the English and litritcher that does beat me'
Elias moved back into the pink house and studied.Became a teacher and got 40 dollars a month.
Was now the cleanest boy in town
My mother used to say to me, ‘Why you don’t take after Elias? I really don’t know what sort of son God give me, you hear.’ 3rd time trying to pass exam and failed.
Hired a new career as a sanitary inspector instead.
For 3 years Elias takes the sanitary inspectors’ examination, and he failed every time.
Elias said, ‘But what the hell you expect in Trinidad? You got to bribe everybody if you want to get your toenail cut.’
Kept flying to other places to take the Exam however continually failed.
‘Shut your arse up, before it have trouble between we in this street.’
The Narrator takes the exam one day and passed and applied for a job with a uniform.
Elias hated him for getting that job and wanted to beat him up saying 'What your mother do to get you that?’
Elias instead became a driver, no theory, just practical.
5. MAN-MAN
Said to be mad by many residents.
He was a man of medium height, thin, and not bad-looking.
He went up every election and put posters everywhere.