Seepersad Naipaul

Who was Seepersad Naipaul?

Seepersad Naipaul was a writer of Indo-Trinidadian heritage. He was the father of V. S. Naipaul and married into the influential Capildeo family.

Seepersad Naipaul worked as a journalist on the Trinidad Guardian. His only book, The Adventures of Gurudeva, is a collection of linked short stories that was first published in Trinidad in 1943. The elder Naipaul wanted his son "Vido" to try to get his story collection published in London, in the hope that any money it earned would help the family escape from the poverty in which they lived in Trinidad. The book was not published in London until after Seepersad's death. Between Father and Son: Family Letters, correspondence with V. S. Naipaul, and other family members, dating from around the time Vidia won a scholarship to Oxford University until the older Naipaul's death, was published in 1999, and extracted in The New Yorker.