V.S. Naipaul will be visiting Trinidad in April 2007 and during the week of April 15, the Nobel prize-winning author will not only give a talk and answer questions from the audience, but will also read from his work at the St. Augustine Campus, UWI.

The year 2007 will mark the first of three celebrations to pay tribute to those West Indians who have distinguished themselves in the world by being awarded the coveted Nobel Prize. V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001. One of his novels, A House for Mr. Biswas, which is partly autobiographical, and which was published when he was just 29 years old, is generally regarded as a masterpiece of twentieth century fiction. Naipaul will celebrate his 75th birthday in August 2007.

In 2008, the St. Augustine Campus will focus on deceased Nobel Laureate for Economics, Arthur Lewis and in 2009 the big man on campus will be Derek Walcott, whose Nobel Prize was also for literature.

V.S. Naipaul is a novelist and prose writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His non-fiction work is generally based on his travels and his close observation of the societies which he visits in the context of the intellectual, political, social and moral challenges of development. He was born in Trinidad.

Arthur Lewis was born in St. Lucia. He won his Nobel Prize in 1979. Much of his economic work focused on how to quicken the pace of development in developing countries and he regarded the development strategy pursued by Puerto Rico in the 1950s as the model that the rest of the Caribbean should follow.

Derek Walcott was also born in St. Lucia. But Trinidad and Tobago was his second home for some time before he moved to Boston.

All three achievers have their champions and detractors but no one can deny that, each of them, in their own way forced the world to pay attention to what they had to say.