[2] He was only allowed to attend elementary school;[3] his brother was sent to work in the cane fields for 8 cents a day, while his sister remained illiterate.
[2] Naipaul's journalism was noted for his acute observations of Trinidadian society and his prose, which "boldly creolised reporting styles and showed his sons the possibilities of combining fiction and non-fiction".
[5] Prof Aaron Eastley, of Brigham Young University in Utah, describes Naipaul's as "a voice that was creative, often sensational, and certainly dramatic".
[2] Naipaul's first book, Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales, is a collection of linked comic short stories that was first published in Trinidad and Tobago in 1943.
After he had a heart attack, his daughter Kamla also wrote to Vidia, urging him to send an encouraging letter to their father and to demand he find a publisher for the book to save Seepersad's life.
[12] Though out of print for several decades, Gurudeva and Other Indian Tales is due to be republished in 2025, as part of Peepal Tree Press' Caribbean Modern Classics series.
[8] In a review of the book, James Woods notes Seepersad Naipaul's dedication to his seven children and the combination of humour and pathos in his letters.
Though the elder Naipaul describes feeling "trapped" in his day job, which doesn't let him write as much as he'd like, he takes joy in his son's accomplishments.
She demanded that, in order to save their father's life and the lives of their siblings, he send an encouraging letter to Seepersad urgently, and that he find a London publisher for The Adventures of Gurudeva, and Other Stories.
[3] At Oxford, V. S. Naipaul's mentor Peter Bayley argued that the book inspired Vidia's first four novels: "I found there The Mystic Masseur, The Suffrage of Elvira and of course quite a lot of Miguel Street and indeed anticipations of Mr Biswas.
"[20] Writing in the T&T Guardian, Shereen Ali noted that the "older, more sympathetic Naipaul" also used many of the features lauded in the work of V. S. "a generation before his son did".
As a result, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago bought and restored 26 Nepaul Street in 2002 — a year after V. S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize in Literature.
[24] As well as running Naipaul House and Literary Museum, the Friends of Mr Biswas also works to support and promote Trinbagonian writers through its ongoing programme of activities.
[27] For example, she explains how her mother coped with her father's early death, succeeding in sending all seven children to university (including all five daughters), and how she and Seepersad imparted a sense of independence in the girls from a young age.
[18] In 2015, based on their shared interest in the elder Naipaul, Eastley, Ramchand and others presented a three-day conference, Seepersad and Sons: Naipaulian Creative Synergies with the UWI Department of Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies and the National Archives of Trinidad and Tobago.
[5] Contributors to the anthology include Eastley, Ramchand, J. Vijay Maharaj, Nicholas Laughlin, Arnold Rampersad, Andre Bagoo, Sharon Millar, Keith Jardim, Raymond Ramcharitar, and others.