V.S. Naipaul, Latin Literature and Ancient Rome

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (1932–2018) is one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. His is the finest body of English-language prose to have emerged since the Second World War; he is the only novelist of his generation whose works bear comparison to those of Thomas Hardy, Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Among Naipaul’s peers, only the poet Philip Larkin (1922–85) and the playwright Sir Tom Stoppard (born in 1937) enjoy the same authentically classic stature; nobody else’s work will survive as long.