Book description
A House for Mr Biswas is V. S. Naipaul's unforgettable third novel.
Born the "wrong way" and thrust into a world that greeted him
with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his 46 years of
life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only
with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning
of his father, Mr Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. He marries
into the domineering Tulsi family, on whom he becomes indignantly
dependent, but rebels and takes on a succession of occupations in an
arduous struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of
his own. Heartrending and darkly comic, A House for Mr Biswas
masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of
post-colonial Trinidad. 'A marvellous prose epic that matches the best
19th century novels' Newsweek V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad
in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years
at University College, Oxford, he began to write, and since then has
followed no other profession. He has published more than twenty books of
fiction and non-fiction, including
Half a Life
, A House for Mr Biswas
, A Bend in the River, The Magic Seeds
and a collection of letters, Between Father and Son
. In 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
