Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, more commonly known as V.S. Naipaul, was a Trinidadian-born British writer celebrated for his works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is renowned for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his more somber novels of alienation across the globe, and his keen chronicles of life and travel. Naipaul's prose was widely admired, though his viewpoints often sparked controversy. Over a span of fifty years, he published more than thirty books.

Naipaul's breakthrough novel, A House for Mr. Biswas, was published in 1961. He was awarded the Booker Prize in 1971 for In a Free State, the Jerusalem Prize in 1983, and received the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago's highest national honor, in 1990. Further recognition came with his knighthood in Britain in 1990 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.