Above: VS Naipaul
By the Caribbean Journal staff
A small home in the Port of Spain suburb of St James will soon become Trinidad’s newest museum.
The museum will celebrate the work of VS Naipaul, who wrote “A House for Mr Biswas” in 1961. That book — and its eponymous house — was inspired by Naipaul’s childhood home on Nepal Street in St James, which will be the site of the museum.
Beginning in October, the house will operate as a literary museum, after renovations to the home that began in 2008 and completed in 2010.
The renovations included the reconstruction of furnishings and fittings mentioned in the novel, and the provision of items like the yellow typewriter, hatrack, dining table and bookcase.
The project is the brainchild of Friends of Mr Biswas, which was created in 2000 by an Act of Parliament to help develop the Naipaul House as a museum and heritage site.
Naipaul, who was born in Chaguanas, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001.