Mr Biswas has been told since the day of his birth that misfortune will follow him.
Intending only to avoid punishment, he causes the death of his father and the dissolution of his family. Wanting simply to flirt with a beautiful woman, he ends up marrying her and reluctantly relying on her domineering family for support. In spite of endless setbacks, Mr Biswas is determined to buy a home of his own. V. S. Naipaul’s classic, A House for Mr Biswas, follows a man’s quest for autonomy against the backdrop of post-colonial Trinidad.
‘A House for Mr Biswas is a book for knowledge, for determination, for ragged unyielding life, a book that, over its great and complex length, shelters the one who reads it.’ Teju Cole, Guardian
‘The Nobel Prize winner’s first great novel.’ Barack Obama
A Place to Call His Own
‘He had thought deeply about this house, and knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted, in the first place, a real house, made with real materials. He didn’t want mud for walls, earth for floor,...
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