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A million mutinies still

A million mutinies still

Author: IDG
Publication: The Economic Times
Date: October 14, 2001

The Nobel Prize for literature didn't take only V S Naipaul by surprise, In fact, controversy dogged him even in his hour of glory. Many of Delhi's literary luminaries refused to comment on the award after it was announced and very few had good things to say about the author. The usual buzz when an Indian or a person of Indian origin makes it big in the global arena seemed missing, at least in the Capital's publishing circles.

But that was only one side of the story. Naipaul has often been considered a Nobel laureate in-the-waiting as had been Amartya Sen for many years. So in a way, the 10-million kronor prize came after a really long wait for the 69-year-old author, now settled in Britain. While the author said the award was a tribute to his home Britain and India, the home of his ancestors, he left out Trinidad where he was born. That was, perhaps, characteristic of Naipaul whose writing has always underscored a search for his roots and an inability to relate to a cultural and ethnic identity.

Typically, Naipaul has always courted controversy. His writing, as an admirer points out, transcends narrow representations and in the process, often puts paid to political correctness.

He lashed out at Islam a week ago and at British homosexuals recently. Last year, he vented his ire on the government of UK over its aggressively plebian attitude to culture and also likened PM Tony Blair to a pirate at the head of a socialist revolution that was destroying the idea of civilisation in that country. He has criticised the corruption in Indian politics and the treatment of the Western world of its former colonies. And of course, his public spats with long-time friend and fellow author Paul Theroux and more recently Salman Rushdie are now literary history. But Naipaul has prevailed.
 


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