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West Indian Wins Award

December 16, 1971

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This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.

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West Indian writer V.S. Naipaul is this year's winner of Britian's literary award, the £4,000 Booker Prize for Fiction. He receives his award for the novel "In A Free State", published by Andre Deutsch of London. Mr. John Gross, on behalf of the judges, described the book as "a work of great distinction, beautifully written, deeply felt, addressing itself with an often disturbing irony to the problems of uprooting and dislocation in the post-colonial world a book which reverberates long after one has finished reading it, and in every way worthy of the prize." The award is sponsored jointly by Britian's Publishers Association and Booker McConnell Ltd. Trinidad-born Mr. Naipaul, who lives in Britian, received his cheque and a Booker Prize Trophy from Professor Frank Kermode at the Cafe Royale, London, November 25th. Thursday, at a dinner held to celebrate the event. Professor Kermode is himself an author and Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. Forty two books were considered by the judges, John Gross (Chairman), Lady Antonia Fraser, Saul Bellow, John Fowles and Philip Toynbee. They released a short list of six contenders a month ago-the other five were

"The Big Chapel" by Thomas Kilroy, "Briefing for a Descent Into Hell" by Doris Lessing, "St. Urbain's Horseman" by Mordecai Richler, "Goshawk Squadron" by Derek Robinson, and "Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont" by Elizabeth Taylor. This is the fifth Award to be won by Mr. Naipaul. His book "The Mystic Masseur", published in 1957, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, "Miguel Street", which came out in 1959 won the Somerset Maughan award "The Stone and the Knights Companion" (1963) gained him the Haeocthden Prize, and "The Mimic Men" published in 1967 won the W. H. Smith and Son Annual Literary Award.