V. Naipaul - Collected Short Fiction

1932

AUTHOR’S LIFE:Birth of Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul in Trinidad (August 17).

LITERARY CONTEXT:Huxley: Brave New World .

Faulkner: Light in August .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Election of Roosevelt in US. Nazis become largest party in German Reichstag.

1933

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Roosevelt announces ‘New Deal’; Hitler becomes German Chancellor.

1934

LITERARY CONTEXT:Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night .

Miller: Tropic of Cancer .

Waugh: A Handful of Dust .

1935

LITERARY CONTEXT:Lewis: It Can’t Happen Here .

Steinbeck: Tortilla Flat .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Nuremberg Laws depriving Jews of citizenship and rights.

1936

LITERARY CONTEXT:Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!

Eliot: Collected Poems .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Outbreak of Spanish Civil War (to 1939). Hitler and Mussolini form Rome — Berlin Axis. Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’ (to 1938).

1937

LITERARY CONTEXT:Dos Passos: USA .

Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men .

Hemingway: To Have and

Have not .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Japanese invasion of China.

1938

LITERARY CONTEXT:Greene: Brighton Rock .

Waugh: Scoop .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Germany annexes Austria; Munich crisis.

1939

LITERARY CONTEXT:Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath .

Joyce: Finnegans Wake .

Miller: Tropic of Capricorn .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:World War II.

1940

LITERARY CONTEXT:Hemingway: For Whom the Bell Tolls .

Greene: The Power and the Glory .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Fall of France; Battle of Britain.

1941

LITERARY CONTEXT:Fitzgerald: The Last Tycoon .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Japanese attack Pearl Harbor; USA enters war. Hitler invades USSR.

1942

LITERARY CONTEXT:Eliot: Four Quartets .

Camus: The Stranger .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Rommel defeated at El Alamein.

1943–8

AUTHOR’S LIFE:Attends Queen’s Royal College, Port of Spain.

1943

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Allied invasion of Italy.

1944

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Allied landings in Normandy.

1945

LITERARY CONTEXT:Orwell: Animal Farm .

Waugh: Brideshead Revisited .

Borges: Fictions .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Defeat of Germany. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. End of World War II. Foundation of the United Nations.

1947

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Indian independence. Cold War develops.

1948

LITERARY CONTEXT:Greene: The Heart of the Matter .

Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Jewish state of Israel comes into existence. Apartheid introduced in South Africa. Gandhi assassinated in India.

1949

LITERARY CONTEXT:Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-Four .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Chinese Revolution. Foundation of NATO.

1950–54

AUTHOR’S LIFE:University College, Oxford; settles in England.

1950

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Korean War (to 1953)

1951

LITERARY CONTEXT:Frost: Complete Poems .

Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye .

1952

LITERARY CONTEXT:Beckett: Waiting for Godot .

Steinbeck: East of Eden .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Eisenhower elected US President. Accession of Elizabeth II.

1953

LITERARY CONTEXT:Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Death of Stalin. European Court of Human Rights set up in Strasbourg.

1954–6

AUTHOR’S LIFE:Editor, ‘Caribbean Voices’ for the BBC, England.

1954

LITERARY CONTEXT:Amis: Lucky Jim .

Golding: Lord of the Flies .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Vietnam War begins.

1955

AUTHOR’S LIFE:Marries Patricia Anna Hale.

LITERARY CONTEXT:Nabokov: Lolita .

Williams: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof .

1956

LITERARY CONTEXT:Osborne: Look Back in Anger .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Suez crisis. British and French begin process of decolonization in Africa. Khrushchev reveals to the Twentieth Party Congress the truth about Stalinist purges. Soviet troops crush Hungarian uprising.

1957–61

AUTHOR’S LIFE:Fiction reviewer for the New Statesman. The Mystic Masseur (1957, wins John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); The Suffrage of Elvira (1958); Miguel Street (1959, wins Somerset Maugham Award).

1957

LITERARY CONTEXT:Kerouac: On the Road .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Civil Rights Act in US. European Economic Community founded.

1958

LITERARY CONTEXT:Pasternak: Doctor Zhivago .

Achebe: Things Fall Apart .

1959

LITERARY CONTEXT:Burroughs: Naked Lunch .

Bellow: Henderson the Rain King .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Castro seizes power in Cuba.

1960

LITERARY CONTEXT:Updike: Rabbit, Run .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Sixty-seven demonstrators killed at Sharpeville, South Africa. Belgian Congo becomes independent.

1961

AUTHOR’S LIFE: A House for Mr Biswas .

LITERARY CONTEXT:Heller: Catch-22 .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:John F. Kennedy elected US President. Erection of Berlin Wall. South Africa excluded from Commonwealth. ANC banned. Yuri Gagarin becomes first man in space.

1962

AUTHOR’S LIFE: The Middle Passage .

LITERARY CONTEXT:Nabokov: Pale Fire .

Solzhenitsyn: One Day in the

Life of Ivan Denisovich .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Cuban missile crisis. Trinidad and Tobago become independent within the British Commonwealth. Commonwealth Immigrants Act. Algeria granted independence by France.

1963

AUTHOR’S LIFE: Mr Stone and the Knights Companion .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

1964

AUTHOR’S LIFE: An Area of Darkness .

HISTORICAL EVENTS:Khrushchev deposed and replaced by Brezhnev.

1965