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Photo: V. Sudershan

Meet the author Patrick French

Did Britain’s greatest living writer just get lucky? According to writer Patrick French, the author of The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul, luck played a significant role in the celebrated author’s life.

“Naipaul’s grandfather was an indentured slave,” says French, adding, “He grew up in Trinidad as part of a community that was very looked down upon.” Dipping into his new book, going back to the year 1918, French continues, “His grandfather was put on a ship… 40 people died on that journey and their corpses were thrown aboard.”

But he lands in Tobago and starts work as part of a shovel gang. “It breaks him, he’s 21 and alone, a minority within a minority in the most fragmented place on earth.” But, since he reads Sanskrit, he’s married to a respected Sardar’s 15-year-old daughter, and lifted out of the world of manual labour.

This was Naipaul’s background. And if it was not for all these stations of luck, French suggests that Naipaul could never have been born into a family that allowed him to study, get into Oxford and subsequently become a writer. “When you think of Sir Vidia, you picture this grand figure – always putting people down,” says French. “He came out of a population where out of 400,000 people, 1/3 was Indian and only 23 per cent of that was literate… This was the rough world into which Vidia Naipaul was born… It’s pretty rare for writers to emerge from that kind of background,” states French, adding that most tend to rise out of the middle-class.

In a BBC documentary titled ‘The strange luck of V.S. Naipaul,’ screened at French’s reading, Naipaul also admits to having been helped along by fate. “The luck of winning a scholarship that got me out of Trinidad. The luck that got me a job at the BBC… The luck that got me writing, probably everyone has these bits of luck in his life,” he says.

French’s luck was probably the fact that Naipaul – despite having a reputation for being difficult – made up for it by being an immensely colourful study, a biographer’s dream in many ways. Admitting that his flamboyant personal life did make the book easier, (“Most writers live a rather dull life!”) French says this book as a result contains a story that’s interesting enough to stand on its own. “It’s a novel with footnotes,” he smiles, “It establishes a narrative of his life. I wanted it to read like a story.”

The most publicised parts of this story are – of course – Sir Vidia’s turbulent romances. “He was married to Patricia, who he met in Oxford,” says French. “Then, in 1972 he went to Argentina and met Margaret, a married mother of three, and started an affair that lasted 24 years.” Although the affair practically destroyed all three of them, neither woman walked out on him, and he didn’t let go of either. “He needed Patricia for her keen editorial sense – and the fact that he used her as a sounding board. And with Margaret he could have the passion he drew upon to write.” When Patricia died, Margaret was summarily dismissed (“He got his literary agent to break it to her”) and he married a Pakistani journalist, Nadira.

“There was not a single area of his life he refused to discuss – even areas that some might cringe to disclose,” French says, talking of the candid interviews he had with the author.

“He said he would not read the biography. I think it’s because of the emotional fragility he has – he genuinely avoids reading about himself. If he was planning to read it he might have clammed up. This was his way of separating himself from the consequences.”

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