Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

To mark the Au­gust 17 birth­day of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s on­ly No­bel Prize win­ner so far, Friends of Mr Biswas opens up a new per­spec­tive on the writer this week, ex­plor­ing his work un­der the wide-rang­ing top­ic “Moth­er­ing”.

Naipaul’s in­ter­con­nect­ed re­la­tion­ships be­tween his ac­tu­al moth­er, Moth­er Trinidad, Moth­er Eng­land and Moth­er In­dia will be the com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing mo­tif of the event.

Host­ed by Friends of Mr Biswas, the memo­r­i­al will take place to­day at NALIS in Port-of-Spain from 5 pm, bring­ing to­geth­er writ­ers, ac­tors, dance and mu­sic artistes, aca­d­e­mics, lit­er­ary crit­ics as well as blood rel­a­tives in ad­mi­ra­tion of one of the coun­try’s most provoca­tive and stim­u­lat­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures.

Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad on Au­gust 17, 1932, was one of the most in­flu­en­tial writ­ers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. His nov­els, trav­el writ­ing and es­says ex­plored themes of colo­nial­ism, mi­gra­tion, iden­ti­ty, dis­place­ment and the com­plex­i­ties of life in post-colo­nial so­ci­eties.

His Trinida­di­an up­bring­ing re­mained an im­por­tant in­flu­ence on his writ­ing, with works in­clud­ing A House for Mr Biswas, The Mys­tic Masseur, Miguel Street and The Loss of El Do­ra­do, draw­ing on the peo­ple, com­mu­ni­ties and so­cial re­al­i­ties and the un­writ­ten his­to­ry of the coun­try that seed­ed him.

The an­nu­al memo­r­i­al has be­come part of the lo­cal lit­er­ary cal­en­dar, pro­vid­ing an op­por­tu­ni­ty not on­ly to re­mem­ber Naipaul but al­so to ex­am­ine his strict de­scrip­tions of what he saw and felt, and chas­ten­ing prophe­cies of what he saw com­ing.

Friends of Mr Biswas has staged the memo­r­i­al in col­lab­o­ra­tion with NALIS, Iere The­atre Pro­duc­tions and oth­er cul­tur­al groups and aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions over the years, help­ing to keep dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing Naipaul’s con­tri­bu­tion to Caribbean lit­er­a­ture alive.

For a coun­try that pro­duced one of the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean’s most cel­e­brat­ed writ­ers, the memo­r­i­al al­so of­fers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­sid­er Naipaul’s com­pli­cat­ed re­la­tion­ship with Trinidad and To­ba­go and the ways his writ­ing con­tin­ues to shape per­cep­tions of the Caribbean.

As read­ers mark his 94th birth­day, to­day’s memo­r­i­al will pro­vide an­oth­er oc­ca­sion to re­turn to his work, re­vis­it his ideas and con­sid­er the place of his lit­er­ary lega­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go and be­yond.