That day in the BBC free-lance room, Naipaul says, he was lucky; the first sentence of the story "Bogart," simple and full of promise, led to the second, to the third, and on until the story was told. With the encouragement of his colleagues, he wrote enough stories to complete a book and tried to have it published. Though he could not interest a publisher in this work and though he continued to lack confidence in his ability as a writer, Naipaul wrote three novels. Since Naipaul first began writing in 1954, it has been his only profession. He has continued to write, to discover, to learn.
Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born 17 August 1932 at Lion House, the home of his mother's family, in the central Trinidad town of Chaguanas. Vidiadhar was the first son and second child of Seepersad and Bropatie Capildeo Naipaul, who had married in 1929. The marriage was an unhappy match. At the time of his son's birth, Seepersad was estranged from his wife and was living in the neighboring town of Montrose.
Seepersad became local correspondent for the Trinidad Guardian in 1929. In 1934, under the strains of a public humiliation related to one of his articles written in 1933, disagreement with his wife's family on matters of religion and politics, and his resignation from the Guardian, Naipaul suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never fully recovered.
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