A House for Mr. Biswas
SynopsisPlot
In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous– and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own.
Story
About this book
Mohun Biswas is born into misfortune in rural Trinidad. After the drowning death of his father, an event for which the boy is held partly responsible, he is passed between relatives and temporary homes with little say over his own life. As he grows older, a single ambition takes shape: to own a house, a small but real piece of the island that belongs to him alone.
Marriage pulls him further from that goal. When he enters the large, hierarchical Tulsi family, he finds himself dependent on in-laws whose household runs by collective authority. Mr. Biswas resists this arrangement with stubborn, often comic defiance, picking fights over dignity and small freedoms while struggling to earn enough to stand on his own. His attempts to acquire property meet repeated setbacks, and the novel follows decades of these efforts across changing addresses and shifting family dynamics in Trinidad.
V. S. Naipaul drew on his own father's experiences for the story, setting it against the social landscape of the Trinidad Indian community during the mid-twentieth century. The book traces how colonial structures, family obligation, and limited resources shape one person's long effort to secure something permanent.
