Shiva Naipaul was born in 1945 in Port of Spain, Trinidad. He was educated at Queen's Royal College and St Mary's College in Trinidad and at University College, Oxford. He married in 1967 and had one son. His books include Fireflies (1970), which won the Jock Campbell New Statesman Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and the Winifred Holtby Prize; North of South (1978), the story of his remarkable journey through Africa; Black and White (1980); A Hot Country (1983); and Beyond the Dragon's Mouth: Stories and Pieces (1984).