Shiva Naipaul
Shiva Naipaul (/ˈnaɪpɔːl, naɪˈpɔːl/; 25 February 1945 – 13 August 1985), born Shivadhar Srinivasa Naipaul in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, was a Trinidadian and British novelist and journalist.
Biography
Shiva Naipaul was the younger brother of novelist V. S. Naipaul. He went first to Queen's Royal College and St Mary's College in Trinidad, then emigrated to Britain, having won a scholarship to study Chinese at University College, Oxford. At Oxford, he met and later married Jenny Stuart, with whom he had a son, Tarun.[1]
With Jenny's support, Shiva Naipaul wrote his first novel, Fireflies (1970), which won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize from the Royal Society of Literature for best regional novel. It was followed by The Chip-Chip Gatherers (1973). He then decided to concentrate on journalism, and wrote two non-fiction works, North of South (1978) and Black & White (1980), before returning to the novel form in the 1980s with A Hot Country (1983), a departure from his two earlier comic novels set in Trinidad, as well as a collection of fiction and non-fiction, Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories and Pieces (1984).[1]
On the morning of 13 August 1985, at the age of 40, Naipaul had a fatal heart attack while working at his desk.[1]
Legacy and posthumous reputation
The Spectator magazine, for which his wife Jenny had worked as a secretary, and which had published many of his articles, established the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize.[2]
In Paul Theroux's Sir Vidia's Shadow, a memoir of Shiva's elder brother, V. S. Naipaul, Theroux described Shiva as a "sot", shrunken by the towering figure of his successful brother, with a penchant for drunken partying and a need to have his meals made for him. Theroux also took issue with Naipaul's skills as a writer, particularly as a travel writer.
Sir Vidia's Shadow has come under attack for what are described as inaccuracies,[3] and the novelist Martin Amis wrote that "Shiva Naipaul was one of those people who caused your heart to lift when he entered the room ... in losing him, we have lost thirty years of untranscribed, unvarnished genius".[4][5]
An Arena documentary on his brother V. S. Naipaul reproduced footage of Shiva from an earlier documentary from the early 1980s, in which Shiva returned to Trinidad to see his mother.[citation needed][6]
Works
Novels
- Fireflies (1970)
- The Chip-Chip Gatherers (1973)
- A Hot Country (1983), published in the U.S. as Love and Death in a Hot Country
Nonfiction
- North of South (1978)
- Black & White (1980), published in the U.S. as Journey to Nowhere
- An Unfinished Journey (1986).
Collections
- Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories and Pieces (1984)
- A Man of Mystery and Other Stories (1995), a selection of stories taken from Beyond the Dragon's Mouth.
See also
References
- ^ a b c Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Sardonic Genius - Geoffrey Wheatcroft recalls his friendship with the writer Shiva Naipaul, who died 20 years ago", The Spectator, 13 August 2005.
- ^ "The visit"[permanent dead link], The Spectator.
- ^ Patrick French's biography of VS Naipaul: Naipaul's friendship with Paul Theroux, The Daily Telegraph.
- ^ Martin Amis, New Statesman, April 1973, "Black and White" by Shiva Naipaul, reprinted in The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews, 1971–2000.
- ^ Matthew Craft, "A Critical Take On Cliche", Hartford Courant, 16 November 2001.
- ^ "Arena: The Strange Luck of V.S. Naipaul" (Adobe Flash). BBC iPlayer.[dead link]
External links
- Bibliography at fanstasticfiction.co.uk
- 1945 births
- 1985 deaths
- Alumni of Queen's Royal College, Trinidad
- Alumni of University College, Oxford
- British male journalists
- British people of Indo-Trinidadian descent
- Hindavi people
- John Llewellyn Rhys Prize winners
- Male novelists
- Naipaul family
- Trinidad and Tobago Hindus
- Trinidad and Tobago male writers
- Trinidad and Tobago novelists
- 20th-century British male writers
- 20th-century novelists