A House for Mr Biswas

New
Paperback
2011
$12.30

`A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion' Anthony Burgess
A House for Mr Biswas is V. S. Naipaul's unforgettable fourth book and the early masterpiece of his brilliant career. Born the `wrong way' and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six 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, for which he is inadvertently responsible, 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 has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels and this triumph of resilience, persistence and dignity masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad.
`A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels' Newsweek

Synopsis

`A work of great comic power qualified with firm and unsentimental compassion' Anthony Burgess

A House for Mr Biswas is V. S. Naipaul's unforgettable fourth book and the early masterpiece of his brilliant career. Born the `wrong way' and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six 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, for which he is inadvertently responsible, 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 has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels and this triumph of resilience, persistence and dignity masterfully evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad.

`A marvellous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels' Newsweek

$12.30

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 200
Publisher: Picador
Published: 01 Apr 2011
ISBN 10: 0330522892
ISBN 13: 9780330522892

Author Bio

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.

His novels include A House for Mr Biswas, The Mimic Men, Guerrillas, A Bend in the River, and The Enigma of Arrival. In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State. His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers, Beyond Belief, The Masque of Africa, and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness, India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now.

In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018.