VS Naipaul makes BBC's list of 100 most influential novels

The BBC has named Sir VS Naipaul’s ‘A House for Mr Biswas’ as one of 100 novels that helped shape the world.
In an article published November 5, 2019, the BBC said the list was selected by a panel of leading writers, curators, and critics to select novels which had an impact on their lives.
The panel consists of Radio 4 Front Row presenter and Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup, authors Juno Dawson, Kit de Waal and Alexander McCall Smith, and Bradford Festival Literary Director Syima Aslam.
‘A House for Mr Biswas’, viewed by some as Naipaul’s first work to achieve critical acclaim worldwide, was written in 1961 and tells the story of Mohun Biswas' life-long goal to have a home of his own.
Drawing some elements from the life of Naipaul's father, the work is a sharply drawn look at life that uses postcolonial perspectives to view a vanished colonial world.
Despite hardship, Biswas becomes a journalist and his son Anand is able to secure a scholarship to England.
The novel is set in the iconic Lion House, the ancestral home of the Capildeo family. The Lion House has been recommended as a Heritage Site and is located in Chaguanas.
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A House for Mr Biswas number 72 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century and Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
Born in 1932, Sir Naipaul attended Queen’s Royal College and went on to win an Open National Scholarship to University College, Oxford.
In 1990 he was knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth and in 1992 he was awarded the Trinity Cross for services to the nation.
In 2001 Sir Naipaul was awarded the Nobel prize for literature.

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