SIR VIDIADHAR SURAJAPRASAD NAIPAUL 1932-2018

Sir V.S. Naipaul was undoubtedly one of the literature's greats. That he enjoyed such an illustrious career ought to be a matter of pride for the Global South.

Not least because it brought with it an  authentic tale of  success in the face of an ever-changing and, at times, inhospitable world.

VS Naipaul was born to Indian parents in Trinidad in 1932.

His father Seepersad, a man of humble beginnings, was a struggling writer, before finding his niche as a full time reporter for the Trinidad Guardian. India his story was retold in his son's critically acclaimed novel, A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS [1961]

Yet Naipaul junior saw no future in Trinidad; apart from what he would later describe as the pure gold; referring to the wealth of characters, intrigue and even a sense of societal defeat that the country held up.

Though Trinidad did, of course, produce him and a career spanning half a century, comprising  29  books, fiction and non-fiction alike. Along the way the world's most prestigious awards.

The Nobel Prize for Literature came calling in 2001. Ostensibly to reward Naipaul  ''for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.''

Indeed, it was not without reason that he secured the mantle of being the first modern global writer.

His vast body of work is scattered with concurrent themes such as : imperialism, freedom, emergent nationalism, religion, revolution, fundamentalism and the colonial mentality.

And in the end, after all, the ''barefoot colonial'' as he liked to call himself, was perhaps at home nowhere but within the pages of his novels.

For he was a man of Indian immigrant ancestry who had grown up in rural Trinidad before setting off for  Oxford University  and upper crust English society.

And even as he found work at the BBC, this did not render him immune from the hostilities borne of the fall of the Empire.

In the end, great literature has a way overshadowing  the mere mortals who create it. For in the words of VS Naipaul himself : the world is what it is.