Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul

Owning a small portion of the Trinidad earth and a respectable house is the dream and the reality sustaining Mohun Biswas through a life of frustration and despair

A House for Mr. Biswas

V. S. Naipaul

A House for Mr.Biswas

Yulande Lindsay

There are few books I consider absolutely perfect and A House for Mr. Biswas is one of them. It is in fact, my favourite book, one I feel compelled to read at least once per year. It is described as Naipaul's 'comic masterpiece' and while there is a great deal of humour it is to me, a tragic story, an examination of one man's struggle to attain that one elusive thing - a house - the ultimate representation of independence from poverty, family an acknowledgement of success. It is a continuously elusive dream, never really fulfilled. It is a book rife with bitterness and rage but yes, comic.

A house for Mr. Biswas

Celina Gacias

borani banjan

Lydia Briggs

Maurice FitzGerald

"A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels" Newsweek"A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion." Anthony BurgessA 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 House for Mr. Biswas

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