A House for Mr. Biswas

In sum, yA House for Mr. Biswasy is a deeply satisfying (as opposed to yentertainingy or superficially yenjoyabley) book, NOT easy summer ybeach readingy, but a book which confirms the psychological cliche that itys the HARD STUFF which is potentially the most rewarding emotionally. So, donyt let the fact yA House for Mr. Biswasy is not yeasyy scare you off, because this is truly a brilliant book, and one which richly deserves its ranking as one of the ybest books of the centuryy (#72 on the Modern Libraryys best fiction list, for instance). Oh, and by the way, why hasnyt V.S. Naipaul won the Nobel prize for literature yet? (Earth to Nobel Prize committee, come in please!) Anyway, for what itys worth, I hereby nominate him, and hope that many of you will second my nomination!


A miracle of a book   November 27, 1999
Dennis Dalman (St. Cloud, Minnesota)
32 out of 55 found this review helpful

A House for Mr. Biswas is one of the few books I tend to "push" people to read. I first heard about Naipaul in 1980 when Elizabeth Hardwick wrote a piece on him in the New York Review of Books. So I read A Bend in the River and loved it. A bit later that year, I moved to London, England to study for a year. I decided to spend the year studying V.S. Naipaul and wrote a book-length paper on him. Biswas was the fourth book I read by him and it just blew me away. It's one of handful of books I'd take to the fabled desert island. Naipaul, I've learned, is not everyone's cup of tea. His maddening fastidiousness can just about drive a reader nuts, especially in his travel writing. But, my God, what a prose master he is! It's an absolute disgrace he hasn't won the Nobel yet. I highly recommend The Enigma of Arrival, one of the strangest and most beautiful books ever written. It's rivetingly haunting. Please read it, folks!


A struggle for independence   June 13, 2002
A.J. (Maryland)
29 out of 49 found this review helpful

As a British colony, Trinidad became the home of many Indian immigrants, and "A House for Mr. Biswas" tells the story of a man who is born into and grows up in this society searching for a place he can call his own. In this novel, V.S. Naipaul vividly and picturesquely describes Trinidad as a thriving but generally poor island populated by a strong Hindu community with a waning observance of the caste system and where, even well into the twentieth century, the most common mode of transportation is the bicycle.

Naipaul's titular protagonist, Mohun Biswas, was born a bad omen, declared by a pundit (Hindu scholar) to be the eventual downfall of his parents; the prophecy is seemingly fulfilled when his father accidentally dies because of his mischief. After some brief schooling, Mr. Biswas (as he is called throughout the novel, even as a young boy) embarks on a series of odd jobs: After an unsuccessful apprenticeship to a pundit, he is sent to work in a relative's rumshop and later becomes a sign-painter. It is on this job that he meets a pretty girl named Shama, whose family, named Tulsi, owns many properties and businesses in Trinidad. A marriage is arranged between Biswas and Shama, and he soon finds himself a prisoner of the Tulsi family in a way, a situation which becomes the basis for his lifelong struggle for independence.

The Tulsis' house, called the Hanuman House, is crowded with members of Shama's extended family, including her mother, her uncle Seth, who manages much of the family's businesses, brothers, sisters, and innumerable and indistinguishable nieces and nephews -- living conditions which lead to irritation and violent arguments with in-laws. The Tulsis give him a shop to run and a sugarcane field to oversee, but he lets deadbeats and workers take advantage of him. His attempt to build his own house and move away from the Tulsis for good, with the help of an incompetent carpenter, ends in disaster.

On his own initiative, he becomes a reporter for a Trinidad newspaper, the Sentinel, writing sensational and often embellished stories, interviewing "Deserving Destitutes," and learning a new kind of creativity which grants him true vocational freedom from the Tulsis. Meanwhile, Shama bears him four children, among whom there is only one son, Anand, whose fragile relationship with his father instills the novel with touching moments of realism.

It's easy to empathize with Mr. Biswas, for he is a character of the most universal sort -- everyone can relate to his desire for autonomy, freedom, and independence. He could be a symbol of the emancipation of a controlled people -- specifically, Indian independence from the British empire -- but the novel also succeeds on its surface level. We know from the prologue that Mr. Biswas eventually does escape the Tulsis and obtain a house, a decrepit, boxlike affair that hardly seems like a personal triumph. But it is *his* house, his declaration of independence, a final confirmation that he is indeed his own man.