226 - Part I from the Private Collection of Sir V.S. Naipaul (1932 – 2018) Lots 226-236

Part I from the Private Collection of Sir V.S. Naipaul (1932 – 2018) Lots 226-236 A Japanese lacquer octagonal three-tiered box and cover Edo period, 17th/18th century Decorated in gold hiramaki-eandnashijiwith wisteria on a black ground,nashijiinterior, 25.5cm. wide x 27cm high,fitted wood box. Provenance: Christie’s 11 November 2008, lot 90. Private Collection of Sir V.S. Naipaul (1932 – 2018) Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidad-born British writer renowned for his works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienation in the wider world, and his vigilant chronicles of life and travels. He wrote in prose that was widely admired, but his views sometimes aroused controversy. He published more than thirty books over fifty years. Naipaul attended the Queen's Royal College in Trinidad and in 1950, enrolled at Oxford University on a scholarship. He subsequently settled in England, although he travelled extensively thereafter. His earliest books (The Mystic Masseur, 1957; The Suffrage of Elvira, 1958; and Miguel Street, 1959) are satirical accounts of life in the Caribbean. Naipaul's breakthrough novel was his fourth book, A House for Mr Biswas, published in 1961. Naipaul won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In a Free State and was shortlisted in 1979 for A Bend In the River. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1983, and was awarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago's highest national honour, in 1990. He received a Knighthood in 1990, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. It is universally agreed he was a magical craftsman of English prose; a master stylist and story-teller with a cold, clear eye for the ironies, tragedies and sufferings of mankind.He saw himself as a lone, stateless observer; free of ideology, politics and illusion. To his champions, he had few equals. He was seen as a moral historian of his time. Naipaul was a serious collector of Japanese and Indian Art and the present lots comprise the first part of his collection. He had exceptional knowledge of both and delighted in acquiring and discussinghis works always with the aim of understanding both method and meaning.