If literature is a religion, V.S. Naipaul is one of its most steadfast monks. Arriving at Oxford in 1950 as an 18-year-old from Trinidad, he already looked old beyond his years, haunted by an outsider's uncertainties and fears, and yet determined to make his way, in his phrase, in the world. After his father died three years later, the eldest son was obliged to help support his family back home, but he stayed on in England and pursued, as he always notes, "no other profession" than writing. Living almost alone in the countryside and writing his way out of disorder with...
