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VS Naipaul a brave novelist for his time

Moved by gushing tributes for his novel, A House for Mr Biswas, VS Naipaul was so moved by emotions that he burst into tears at the end of a special session held to mark 50 years of its publication on Day One of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).

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Paul Theroux and Lady Nadira with VS Naipaul as the 82-year-old Nobel winner is applauded by the audience
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Moved by gushing tributes for his novel, A House for Mr Biswas, VS Naipaul was so moved by emotions that he burst into tears at the end of a special session held to mark 50 years of its publication on Day One of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF).

The 82-year-old Nobel Prize winning author had been wheeled onto the stage to join the panel at the end, and managed to speak just one line: "I thank the speakers for being so generous." His wife, Lady Nadira, who accompanied him on stage, made up with a warmer, "My husband is overwhelmed by all your reception."

This is Naipaul's first outing in Jaipur, and he sat in the front row among an audience bursting at the seams of the Rajnigandha Garden Lawns which had gathered to listen to a high-powered panel of writers —Amit Chaudhuri, Hanif Kureishi, Paul Theroux, and Farrukh Dhondy acting as moderator – to discuss A House For Mr Biswas, the book that first laid the foundation for Naipaul's global acclaim.

Published in 1961, the book has now acquired the status of a classic, and is taught at universities and regularly makes it to "most significant books of the last century" lists. Given its already iconic status, the panelists naturally were not unstinting in their praise of the book.

A House for Mr Biswas, set in Naipaul's native Trinidad, is set among the expatriate Indian community there. It tells the story of Mr Biswas, said to be based on Naipaul's own father, who defies his "inauspicious" birth, squalid circumstances and a mismatched marriage to get himself an education and also build a house – the symbol, to him, of security and happiness.

Pathbreaking for its time, the novel clearly has had an enduring impact. Chaudhuri, an acclaimed novelist himself, spoke about the novel's liveliness and economy, adding that his first novel had an uncle figure singing in the bathroom and it was Naipaul who showed him how it could be done. Kureishi was fulsome too – saying that 'A House… was one of the books that made him want to be a writer.'

Theroux, his former friend-turned-foe turned (in all likelihood) friend again, spoke about how, with A House for Mr Biswas, Naipaul was "writing about things people, food, customs and way of life, that had never been written about" and that it was "a brave thing to do", and a mark of genius. Dhondy, one of the leading lights of the British Asian literature in Britain, wondered whether Naipaul could be called the first international writer, someone who was of no one nation, but could claim literature as his nationality.

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