In Calcutta 20 years ago I used to know a nuclear scientist, though not very well. He came, as everyone said, from a “good family” and had a big old villa in an unlikely part of the city that had more recently been given over to blocks of flats and offices, probably built on land that his ancestors had owned.

One morning he phoned with an invitation, which came out in a rush. “VS Naipaul is in town and somehow I’ve asked him to supper. I don’t know why I did, but now I have to have guests! Please come. You’re British and you’ll be punctual. In fact, come early, the earlier the better. I want someone else to be there when Naipaul arrives and you know about us Bengalis, we’re never on time.” When I got to the house in its dark garden, the host was lit up with nerves. He had never met Naipaul and neither had I, but his reputation played in our conversation like a crude Hollywood trailer. His fastidiousness about food and drink, his vanity, his prickliness, his arrogance — the rumours suggested we weren’t in for a picnic.

Naipaul came in smiling with a woman we recognised as his “Argentinian mistress” at his side. When one or two other guests turned up, the man they faced, so far as they knew, was the writer who had given the world its most distinct impression of modern India, an impression that in the view of many Indians was hopelessly flawed and both insulting and wrong. They were curious and, like me, wanted to see the phenomenon in the flesh — the Genius, as his wife Pat referred to him in her diaries, quoted in Patrick French’s new biography.

Naipaul talked about his recent stay in Madras, how the city had become a filthy mess since he was first there in the early 1960s, how anti-Brahmin politics were responsible. But surely, somebody said, it was economic development that was to blame, smashing down and building up and poisoning the rivers? “No,” Naipaul said, with an impatient tapping of his brogue, “negritude, negritude, negritude”.

But compared with the contents of French’s biography, written with Naipaul’s cooperation and blessing, this is nothing, just a way of Naipaul amusing himself over a glass of wine. “Will you consider one day being Lady Naipaul?” Naipaul asks Nadira, a woman he has just met in Pakistan when his wife Pat is dying of cancer in England, and Margaret is elsewhere. Nadira consents; the mistress of more than 20 years is given the shove; and a week after Pat dies, Nadira is ensconced in his house in Wiltshire.

Naipaul has his knighthood and his Nobel and only in flashes does he write as he used to. The next few days may be his last big week. The biography is published on Monday and on April 10 he has a 90-minute documentary on BBC TV. They are well worth reading, but having done both I feel no need to know any more. “Never meet a famous author if you like their work” is not a bad maxim. I am glad to have met him, but reading him is the worthwhile thing to do. Be grateful, if you must, remember his shuddersome life, that so much selfishness has given us such great books. — The Guardian