V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) Naipaul - Born in Port-of-Spain, he received his Bachelors degree at the University of Oxford. He became a freelance journalist after graduating from college. Then, while still working as a freelance journalist, he wrote many novels and essays. He is best known for writing A House for Mr. Biswas, but he won the Booker Prize (Britain’s highest literary award) for the novel, In a Free State. For his works he won the Nobel Prize for Literature for 2001.