Trinidad-born Nobel laureate V S Naipaul passed away on Saturday, 11 August, at the age of 85. Social media, to no one’s surprise, was immediately flooded with reactions. But this time around, the chatter was significantly divided.
While some remembered Naipaul as a stalwart, who’s left behind a legacy that needs preservation, others pointed out the problematic aspects of his work, thus raising the age-old question: Can the artist be dissociated from his work?
In 2001, Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.”