A House for Mr. Biswas

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswasis an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels.

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.

"A marvelousprose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power." Newsweek

"His ear is flawless....The pleasure of watching him at work is sufficient in itself....Naipaul's portrait of the Trinidad-Indian community is wonderfully calm and full." The New Yorker

"[The author's] teeming tapestry of life in Trinidad gives him a voice to match; it is that of a skilled raconteur — prolix, explicit, keen for irony....Mr. Naipaul's narration is nimbly and smoothly wound." The Christian Science Monitor

"Naipaul has written literature of the very highest order. It took much ambition to achieve it. And Mr. Biswas struck the first blow." Ian Buruma

"Conceived and executed within the great tradition of the humanistic novel, A House for Mr. Biswas is the subtle and comprehensible an analysis of the colonial situation as anything in imaginative literature." Francis Wyndham

"A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion." Antony Burgess

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul's brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels.

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous — and endless — struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against an emblematic postcolonial canvas.

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous — and endless — struggle to weaken their hold over him, and purchase a house of his own.

V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and non-fiction and the recipient of numerous honours, including the Nobel Prize in 2001, the Booker Prize in 1971, and a knighthood for services to literature in 1990. He lives in Wiltshire, England.