Why VS never wrote an autobiography?

VS Naipaul produced masterpieces in both fiction and nonfiction but never attempted his autobiography saying it can distort facts.

The Nobel Prize and the Booker winner’s oeuvre included over 30 works including the famous “A House for Mr Biswas” (published in 1961). His family said on Saturday that he has died at the age of 85.

According to Naipaul, fiction never lies and reveals a writer totally. But an autobiography, he felt, “can distort; facts can be realigned”.

In 2008, Patrick French came out with “The World Is What It Is: the Authorized Biography of V S Naipaul”, in which he examined among other things the legendary author’s life within a displaced community and his fierce ambition at school.

He then describes how, on scholarship at Oxford, homesickness and depression struck with great force; the ways in which Naipaul’s first wife helped him to cope and their otherwise fraught marriage; and Naipaul’s struggles throughout subsequent uncertainties in England, including his 25-year-long affair.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul was born on August 17, 1932 in Trinidad in an Indian Hindu family and moved to England at 18 after receiving a scholarship to University College, Oxford. He subsequently settled in England, although he travelled extensively thereafter.