V.S. Naipaul, Who Explored Colonialism Through Unsparing Books, Dies at 85

The author V. S. Naipaul in 1991. He was compared to Conrad, Dickens and Tolstoy, but was also a lightning rod for criticism.
"V.S. Naipaul, the Nobel laureate who documented the migrations of peoples, the unraveling of the British Empire, the ironies of exile and the clash between belief and unbelief in more than a dozen unsparing novels and as many works of nonfiction, died on Saturday at his home in London. He was 85. ... Compared in his lifetime to Conrad, Dickens and Tolstoy, he was also a lightning rod for criticism, particularly by those who read his portrayals of third-world disarray as apologies for colonialism. Yet Mr. Naipaul exempted neither colonizer nor colonized from his scrutiny. He wrote of the arrogance and self-aggrandizement of the colonizers, yet exposed the self-deception and ethical ambiguities of the liberation movements that swept across Africa and the Caribbean in their wake. He brought to his work moral urgency and a novelist’s attentiveness to individual lives and triumphs. ..."
NY Times
NY Times: V.S. Naipaul, a Writer of Many Contradictions and Obvious Greatness
Jacobin: V. S. Naipaul and the American Right
Wikipedia
W - A House for Mr Biswas, W - The Mimic Men, W - A Flag on the Island, W - In a Free State, W - Guerrillas, W - A Bend in the River
Guardian: V. S. Naipaul
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