The Mayfair Times Mayfair & St James’s Literary Festival – in association with The Josephine Hart Poetry Hour

A tribute to V.S. Naipul with Farrukh Dhondy Co-hosted by Mrs Girija Sinha (wife of the Indian High Commissioner) and Selma Day, Editor of Mayfair Times.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, who died in August, aged 85, was born to descendants of indentured Indians in colonial Trinidad in 1932. From there he rose to become one of the giants of 20th Century writing, publishing more than 30 books ranging from comic novels set in his homeland to memoir and travel writing. He moved to Britain to study at Oxford in 1950 after winning a government scholarship. He received a knighthood in 1990 for works such as A Bend in the River and A House for Mr Biswas. He was awarded the 1971 Booker Prize for his novel In a Free State and in 2001 won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Farrukh Dhondy, a writer and long-time friend of V.S. Naipaul, described his writing as being “distinguished by its clarity, lack of self-indulgence and for his unique perspective on the post-colonial world”.