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The Most Famous

WRITERS from Trinidad and Tobago

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This page contains a list of the greatest Trinidadian Writers. The pantheon dataset contains 5,755 Writers, 3 of which were born in Trinidad and Tobago. This makes Trinidad and Tobago the birth place of the 99th most number of Writers behind Somalia and Nepal.

Top 3

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Trinidadian Writers of all time. This list of famous Trinidadian Writers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of V. S. Naipaul

1. V. S. Naipaul (1932 - 2018)

With an HPI of 62.43, V. S. Naipaul is the most famous Trinidadian Writer.  His biography has been translated into 95 different languages on wikipedia.

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (; 17 August 1932 – 11 August 2018) was a Trinidadian-born British writer of works of fiction and nonfiction in English. He is known for his comic early novels set in Trinidad, his bleaker novels of alienation in the wider world, and his vigilant chronicles of life and travels. He wrote in prose that was widely admired, but his views sometimes aroused controversy. He published more than thirty books over fifty years. Naipaul's breakthrough novel A House for Mr Biswas was published in 1961. Naipaul won the Booker Prize in 1971 for his novel In a Free State. He won the Jerusalem Prize in 1983, and in 1990, he was awarded the Trinity Cross, Trinidad and Tobago's highest national honour. He received a knighthood in Britain in 1990, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001.

Photo of Steven Pressfield

2. Steven Pressfield (1943 - )

With an HPI of 45.99, Steven Pressfield is the 2nd most famous Trinidadian Writer.  His biography has been translated into 19 different languages.

Steven Pressfield (born September 1, 1943) is an American author of historical fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays, including his 1995 novel The Legend of Bagger Vance and 2002 nonfiction book The War of Art.

Photo of C. L. R. James

3. C. L. R. James (1901 - 1989)

With an HPI of 43.91, C. L. R. James is the 3rd most famous Trinidadian Writer.  His biography has been translated into 21 different languages.

Cyril Lionel Robert James (4 January 1901 – 31 May 1989), who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist, Trotskyist activist and Marxist writer. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of Marxism, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature. A tireless political activist, James is the author of the 1937 work World Revolution outlining the history of the Communist International, which stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and in 1938 he wrote on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.Characterised by one literary critic as an "anti-Stalinist dialectician", James was known for his autodidactism, for his occasional playwriting and fiction, and as an avid sportsman. The performance of his 1934 play Toussaint Louverture was the first time black professional actors featured in a production written by a black playwright in the UK. His 1936 book Minty Alley was the first novel by a black West Indian to be published in Britain. He is also famed as a writer on cricket, and his 1963 book Beyond a Boundary, which he himself described as "neither cricket reminiscences nor autobiography", is commonly named as the best single book on cricket, and even the best book about sports ever written.

Pantheon has 3 people classified as writers born between 1901 and 1943. Of these 3, 1 (33.33%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living writers include Steven Pressfield. The most famous deceased writers include V. S. Naipaul and C. L. R. James.

Living Writers

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Deceased Writers

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