Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul is a Trinidad-born author of Indian origin who later became a British citizen. A descendent of Indian indentured laborers brought to work in the sugar plantations of the West Indies in the nineteenth century by the British colonial administration, Naipaul went on to win an “Island Scholarship” to Oxford after completing his education at Queen’s Royal College, Port of Spain, Trinidad. Writing in the Anglophone tradition won him critical acclaim, particularly for his novel A House for Mr. Biswas (1961), which established him as a writer of some reckoning. His ability to use material from his Caribbean backyard, manifested in his early comic works such as The Mystic Masseur (1957), The Suffrage of Elvira (1958), and Miguel Street (1959), marked him for his distinctiveness of voice and authenticity of content. His later forays into non-fiction were often met with criticism for their controversial opinions, such as his indictment of Indian society in his India trilogy— An Area of Darkness (1964), India: A Wounded Civilization (1976), and India: A Million Mutinies Now (1990). He was lauded for his dexterity with the English language and the experimental nature of works such as The Enigma of Arrival (1987) and A Way in the World (1994).