Obama lauds Naipaul book

V S Naipaul

(Trinidad Guardian) For­mer Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma has list­ed A House for Mr Biswas by Trinidad-born No­bel lau­re­ate Sir VS Naipaul among the list of best books he read this year.

Since his time as PO­TUS, Oba­ma has pro­vid­ed a year-end list of book’s movies and mu­sic that he found “most thought-pro­vok­ing, in­spir­ing, or just plain loved” dur­ing the course of the year.

This year it was no dif­fer­ent as Oba­ma post­ed the list on his Face­book page on Fri­day.

“As 2018 draws to a close, I’m con­tin­u­ing a favourite tra­di­tion of mine and shar­ing my year-end lists,” he wrote.

V S Naipaul

“It gives me a mo­ment to pause and re­flect on the year through the books, movies, and mu­sic that I found most thought-pro­vok­ing, in­spir­ing, or just plain loved. It al­so gives me a chance to high­light tal­ent­ed au­thors, artists, and sto­ry­tellers—some who are house­hold names and oth­ers who you may not have heard of be­fore. Here’s my best of 2018 list—I hope you en­joy read­ing, watch­ing, and lis­ten­ing,” Oba­ma wrote.

This is the sec­ond time Naipaul’s book has made it on an FB sta­tus by Oba­ma this year.

When Naipaul, 85, passed away in Lon­don on Au­gust 11, Oba­ma re­vis­it­ed the “old clas­sic.”

On Au­gust 19 Oba­ma post­ed: “One of my favourite parts of sum­mer is de­cid­ing what to read when things slow down just a bit, whether it’s on a va­ca­tion with fam­i­ly or just a qui­et af­ter­noon. This sum­mer I’ve been ab­sorbed by new nov­els, re­vis­it­ed an old clas­sic, and reaf­firmed my faith in our abil­i­ty to move for­ward to­geth­er when we seek the truth”.

“With the re­cent pass­ing of VS Naipaul, I reread A House for Mr Biswas, the No­bel Prize win­ner’s first great nov­el about grow­ing up in Trinidad and the chal­lenge of post-colo­nial iden­ti­ty,” he wrote.

On Fri­day, Naipaul’s clas­sic again was ref­er­enced by Oba­ma as he gave a re­minder of the books that I read this year that ap­peared on ear­li­er lists.

Oba­ma’s post on Fri­day gar­nered more than 215,000 re­ac­tions.