Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932, and he has lived in Great Britain since 1950. He's written about his exodus to Great Britain, and his heritage (his parents were Hindu immigrants from Northern India), but his literary domain has extended to other countries like Africa, America, and the Islamic countries of Asia, as well.

His father was a journalist and once said, "Don't be scared of being an artist. D. H. Lawrence was an artist through and through; and, for the time being at any rate, you should think as Lawrence. Remember what he used to say, 'Art for my sake.'"

In an interview with Tarun Tejpal, Naipaul said, "I wanted to be very famous. I also wanted to be a writer: to be famous for writing. And the absurdity about the ambition at the time was that I had no idea what I was going to write about."

In the Press Release, the Swedish Academy highlights some of the works that have helped to make him such a "literary circumnavigator." Two of his works, "The Mystic Masseur "and "Miguel Street, "have "established Naipaul as a humorist and a portrayer of street life."

His almost revolutionary way with words has gone beyond the way "fictional narrative, autobiography and documentaries have merged... " Using "The Loss of El Dorado" as an example, the Swedish Academy writes, "Naipaul has drawn attention to the novel’s lack of universality as a form, that it presupposes an inviolate human world of the kind that has been shattered for conquered peoples."

He forges new paths in literature, carrying on the traditions of literature. With great style, he really does "transform rage into precision and allows events to speak with their own inherent irony."

In "Reading and Writing," Naipaul recalls "one day, deep in my almost fixed depression, I began to see what my material might be: the city street from whose mixed life we had held aloof, and the country life before that, with the ways and manners of a remembered India. It seemed easy and obvious when it had been found; but it had taken me four years to see it. Almost at the same time came the language, the tone, the voice for that material. It was as if voice and matter and form were part of one another."

Works:

• "The Mystic Masseur" (1957)
• "The Suffrage of Elvira" (1958)
• Miguel Street (1960)
  
• A House for Mr. Biswas (1961)
• "The Middle Passage" (1962), travel work
• "Mr Stone and the Knight's Companion" (1963)
• " An Area of Darkness" (1964), trilogy
  
• "The Mimic Men" (1967)
• "A Flag on the Island" (1967), short story collection
• "The Loss of El Dorado: A History" (1970), nonfiction
• "In a Free State" (1971)
• "The Overcrowded Barracoon and Other Articles" (1972)
• "Guerrillas" (1975)
• "India: A Wounded Civilization" (1977)
• "The Perfect Tenants and The Mourners" (1977)
• "A Bend in the River" (1979), autobiographical
• "The Return of Eva Peron" (1980), nonfiction
• "A Congo Diary" (1980)
• "Finding the Center" (1986)
• "The Enigma of Arrival" (1987), autobiographical
• "A Turn in the South" (1989)
• "India: A Million Mutinies Now" (1990)
• "A Way in the World" (1994), autobiographical
• "Among the Believers" (1981)
• "Beyond Belief" (1998)