Trinidadian Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul, who died on Saturday, aged 85, was “a giant”, the island’s West Indian Association has said.

Naipaul, whose books such as Miguel Street and A House for Mr Biswas are required reading in his homeland, was among three Caribbean Nobel laureates, alongside the late Sir Arthur Lewis and the late Derek Walcott.

Anil Chatergoon, president of the West Indian Association, said: “In his book An Area of Darkness, he writes ‘No city or landscape is truly real until it has been given the quality of myth by a writer’.

“This is exactly what he accomplished by his sharp inflection and introspection of post-colonial societies around the world.

“His literature provided an intrinsic insight of local society finding its place as it matured and opened the minds of readers to its own Caribbean context.”

In his fiction and non-fiction, Naipaul, descended from Indian indentured labourers, explored the colonial and post-colonial experience with sometimes unsparing candour.

Mr Chatergoon said that the West Indian Association “joins with the Caribbean and its diaspora to mourn the loss of a literary giant”.