To mark the Au­gust 17 birth­day of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s on­ly No­bel Prize win­ner so far, Friends of Mr Biswas opens up a new per­spec­tive on the writer to­mor­row, ex­plor­ing his work un­der the wide-rang­ing top­ic “Moth­er­ing”. Naipaul’s in­ter­con­nect­ed re­la­tion­ships be­tween his ac­tu­al moth­er , Moth­er Trinidad, Moth­er Eng­land and Moth­er In­dia will be the com­plex and fas­ci­nat­ing mo­tif of the event.

Host­ed by Friends of Mr Biswas, the memo­r­i­al will take place on Thurs­day at NALIS in Port-of-Spain from 5pm, bring­ing to­geth­er writ­ers, ac­tors, dance and mu­sic artistes, aca­d­e­mics, lit­er­ary crit­ics as well as blood rel­a­tives in ad­mi­ra­tion of one of the coun­try’s most provoca­tive and stim­u­lat­ing lit­er­ary fig­ures.

Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad on Au­gust 17, 1932, was one of the most in­flu­en­tial writ­ers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. His nov­els, trav­el writ­ing and es­says ex­plored themes of colo­nial­ism, mi­gra­tion, iden­ti­ty, dis­place­ment and the com­plex­i­ties of life in post-colo­nial so­ci­eties.