Trinidad tribute to Naipaul

VS Naipaul: Left Trinidad for England in 1950

The Trinidad childhood home of Nobel-winning author VS Naipaul is to be turned into a museum and research centre for Caribbean literature.

Naipaul lived in the house - described as "small, square and humble" - after moving to the capital of Trinidad and Tobago, Port-of-Spain, at the age of six in 1938.

The country's government has now set aside 500,000 Trinidadian dollars (£58,000) to convert the house into a museum, while a new library will also be named after him.

Port-of-Spain: Naipaul has criticised his former home

Naipaul, who moved to the UK in 1950, was recently named winner of the Nobel Prize for literature for works that "compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".

His Port-of-Spain home inspired the 1961 novel The House of Mr Biswas, which many consider to be his masterpiece.

But his views on his former home country have been described as "erratic and strange, and often vicious".

He has described the country's society as "deformed" and criticised Trinidad as "unimportant, uncreative, cynical... a dot on the map".

In celebrating the achievements of Sir Vidia Naipaul, we are celebrating ourselves as a cosmopolitan people

Ganga Singh
Trinidad and Tobago culture minister

He credited England, his current home, and India, "home of my ancestors", when he won the Nobel Prize but did not make any mention of Trinidad.

But Trinidad and Tobago culture minister Ganga Singh said the country would be "celebrating ourselves as a cosmopolitan people" by establishing the museum and literature centre.

A new library in Port-of-Spain, due to open soon, will also be named after the 69-year-old author.

The Sir Vidia S Naipaul National Library Complex of Trinidad and Tobago will dedicate a wing to research material on Naipaul and two other Caribbean Nobel recipients.

Derek Walcott and Arthur Lewis, both from St Lucia, have previously been named laureates for literature and economics respectively.