“Change had come over him without his knowing. There had been no precise point at which the city had lost its romance and promise, no point at which he had begun to consider himself old, his career closed, and his visions of the future became only visions of Anand's future. Each realization had been delayed and had come, not as a surprise, but as a statement of a condition long accepted.”

“Every man and woman he saw, even at a distance, gave him a twist of panic. But he had already grown used to that; it had become part of the pain of living. Then, as he cycled, he discovered a new depth to this pain. Every object he had not seen for twenty-four hours was part of his whole and happy past. Everything he now saw became sullied by his fear, every field, every house, every tree, every turn in the road, every bump and subsidence. So that, by merely looking at the world, he was progressively destroying his present and his past.”

“The weeks before he died, Mr Mohun Biswas, a journalist of Sikkim Street, St James , Port of Spain, was sacked. He had been ill for some time. In less than a year he had spent more than nine weeks at the Colonial Hospital and convalesced at home for even longer. When the doctor advised him to take a complete rest the 'Trinidad Sentinel' had no choice. It gave Mr Biswas three months' notice and continued, up to the time of his death, to supply him every morning with a free copy of the paper.”

This novel provides a detailed account of the life of Mr Biswas from birth to death. It takes place in the East Indian community living on the island of Trinidad during the first half of the twentieth century. Biswas is described as a hapless individual prone to irrational optimism who seems doomed to experience bad luck — much of it caused by his own mistakes.

The overarching story is a sad mixture of repeated failures and barely visible success. One view of the story is to see it as a life of futile strife ending in premature death at age 46. But a second look reveals some successes such as providing an education for his children, two of whom obtain college degrees. Also his unsatisfying marriage reaches a quiescent acceptance by the end of his life. And after a life of trying and failing to own a house of his own, finally in the end he managed to own a house which unfortunately had problems and in many ways was a bad bargain.

Mr Biswas married into the Tulsi family, an extended family of multiple brothers, sisters and inlaws. The family had much wealth but through the course of time their fortunes seem to be dwindling through internal family divisions and mismanagement. Most of the time Mr Biswas believes that his becoming involved with the Tulsi family is the cause of his misfortune, but in reality they kept his family fed during times when his health and fortunes were at a low ebb.

The book provides a detailed description of a unique time and place — the expatriate Indian community in colonial Trinidad. It describes spousal and family relations that includes beatings and abuse which I have to assume is a realistic depiction of life as the author had experienced it growing up in Trinidad. Nevertheless I found it disturbing how it seemed so widely practiced and expected.

In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A House for Mr Biswas number 72 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English language Novels from 1923 to 2005." The author, V.S. Naipaul, won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Literature.

The following is from PageADay's "1000 Books to Read Before You Die Calendar" for January 29, 2020:

As any reader of V.S. Naipaul's work knows, the 2001 Nobel laureate did not suffer fools gladly. The protagonist of A House for Mr Biswas is, as far as fools go, the exception that proves the Naipaul rule. Mr. Biswas's foolishness is portrayed with such fondness for the persistence of private aspirations in the face of the vicissitudes of making ends meet that he assumes in the end a dignity out of all proportion to his achievement. Infused with a simple man's wish to make a home for himself in this homeless world, Naipaul's masterpiece teems with complicated life.

my heart, my heart!— the colonial middle class, the rummaging for better. the start of the immigrant’s need for education. and thick, humid prose: the trinidadian sun is always suffocating here; the displaced, indentured servant’s culture clings ever on.

14. to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born: unnecessary and unaccommodated.
59. being able to hold a cigarette between his greasy fingers and greasy lips without staining it.
222. to amuse her, he read from his novels, expounded Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, made her learn the quotations hanging on the wall, made her sit still while he unsuccessfully tried to sketch her.

——
248. what do you want me to do with the food you feed me? what?
—-

357. I raised my hand but I did not know if it got to the top. I opened my mouth to cry for help. water filled it. I thought I was going to die, and I closed my eyes because I did not want to look at the water.
413. at first, this was only a pose, and imitation of his father.

—
450. what about the crosswords, mohun. couldnt you make me win just one?
—

545. while they waited for the revolution, life had to be lived
546. I’ll break the bow over her parents head. people starving, not getting enough to eat in Trinidad, and she playing the violin in Canada!
588. Mr Biswas needed his son’s interest and anger. in all the world, there was no one else to whom he could complain.

أحلام السيد بيسواس لم تكن كبيرة ، فهو لم يحلم بأكثر من الزواج من فتاة يعيش معها الحياة التي رآها في الكتب ممكنة ، ثم أنه تمنّى أن تكون له مهنة تناسب طموحاته ، ثم أنه تمنّى أن يحظى بالإحترام ، ثم أخيراً تمنّى أن يكون له بيت ؛ بيت يكون له بمثابة الوطن ، يحتضنه حين تقسو عليه الدنيا ، ويستطيع أن يحتمي بجدرانه من غدرها ، وأن يبكي دون أن يصل بكاؤه إلى سمع أحد .

أحلام عادية ، لم يكن من المستحيل تحقيقها لو لم يكن يعيش في دولة من دول العالم الثالث الغارقة في ظلمات الخرافة ، لا تؤمن بأن ولادة طفل في منتصف الليل تعد نذير شؤم ، فيكون هذا الطفل الرضيع الذي لا حول له ولا قوة محكوماً عليه مسبقاً بالفشل ودمار الآخرين .

فيكبر هذا الطفل حاملاً فوق كاهليه عبء وفاة والده ، منبوذاً من أسرته ، وحيداً ، ومجاهداً بكل طاقته ليحطّم هذا المصير الذي لم يختره .

كان بإمكانه أن يتزوّج الفتاة التي يحب ويختار ، بدلاً من أن يتزوّج من أول فتاة رآها في حياته ، دون أن يعرف عنها أي شئ ، لقد ألقى بورقة مكتوب فيها "أحبك" وهو لا يعرف بعد إن كانت تستطيع القراءة أم لا . لكن تصرّفه الصبياني هذا ورّطه في اختيار لم يكن بعد مدركاً أنه اختاره .

كان بإمكانه أن يحظى بالإحترام لم يكن يعيش في بيت التولسيين ، تافهاً أمام سلطة "سث" ، ضعيفاً أمام قوة "جوفند" ، حقيراً أمام قداسة "هاري" ، دون زوجة تدعمه وتشد من أزره .

عاش السيّد بيسواس حياته مقاتلاً في سبيل أبسط حقوقه ، الحقوق التي رأى أنه يستحقها ، واستكثرتها عليه الحياة .

البيت الذي كان يحلم به ، ولطالما حلم به ، لم يتمكّن من الحصول عليه إلا في نهاية حياته ، بعد أن أعياه المرض وفقد وظيفته ورحل عنه أبناؤه .

لم تكن أحلام السيد بيسواس بالكثيرة ، لكن الحياة في دولة من دول العالم الثالث جد قاسية .

هذه الرواية مليئة بتفاصيل حياة الملايين ممن يقاتلون يومياً في سبيل الحصول على أبسط حقوقهم دون أن ينالوها ، فلا يملكون في مواجهة فشلهم هذا إلا البكاء كـ "شاما" أو السخرية كـ "بيسواس" .

فوجئت حين لم أجد أحداً من أصدقائي القرّاء على كثرتهم قد قرأ هذه الرواية ، التي طبعتها "الهيئة العامة للكتاب" منذ خمس سنوات كاملة ، لـ "نايبول" الذي فاز بـ "نوبل" في 2001 !

عمل يستحق القراءة .

In reading some of the reviews on Goodreads of this book, I felt each had a point of view that was correct. It was brilliant, it was a bit of a slog, there were too many unnecessary characters, it could have been shorter. But back to brilliant, it certainly was. The character of Mr. Biswas, one of the worst husbands and fathers in literature, was compelling. And his bad and good luck kept the interest throughout. The ideal reader is of course a fan of V. S. Naipaul, but anyone who wants a memorable reading experience that presents Indians living in the Caribbean, and so much more, will treasure this book.

2 stars

I read this for school ... and sometimes I get lucky and actually like the book that's assigned, however, not so much with this one. It was extremely random throughout the entirety of the book - and there was nothing I really liked when I think about it.

Overall, I'm pretty glad to be done with it.

It took me a really long time to finish this book. I am not a fast reader so generally I try to avoid reading novels that are very long. Also it is my personal opinion that some of the detailed and fascinating descriptions of the settings (especially when the story is not moving forward at all) may cause an average reader of today to simply put down a book.
Nevertheless, Naipaul is a great writer and his skill is evident throughout this book. This is a story about life and the struggles and events that happens throughout the lifespan of ordinary people like Mr. Biswas. The occurrence of such events is apparently quite subtle and their profound effects sometimes go unnoticed. Therefore the story at times seems to move at a slower pace. Naipaul has beautifully captured all that in this work. The characters in this novel are extremely well thought and crafted with perfection.
In short I will give this book 3.5/5 and I definitely recommend this book for its quality of writing and thoughtful content but make sure you have the time and patience to immerse into the reading experience that it requires.

This if the fourth Naipaul I have read, and it is probably my least favourite. Which is somewhat surprising, since this is one of the books usually listed as among his best.

I did like it. The characters are fun and engaging. The story kept me interested, and I read the book every chance I got.

But it did have some flaws. Trying to be Dickensian, there is too much going on. Too many characters, too many subplots, too many episodes of the plot that make the same points and delay developments. His much simpler first novel, The Mystic Masseur, achieves some of the same things as this novel, but without the excess.

Mohun Biswas is a cursed child who brings that curse upon his family. As a late teen he suddenly finds himself married into a domineering and large family in which he feels trapped. And the rest of the novel is set within the dynamics of this family. This is based somewhat on the experiences of Naipaul's own father and his in-laws.

There is constant feuding among the members of the family, and this becomes tiring at times. Occasionally Mohun will be on good terms with his mother-in-law and then in the next chapter all will decay again. Again, it can become a little tiresome.

Though I found the characters fun and engaging, they also tired me at times. Mohun himself remains very immature throughout his life. This, of course, is on purpose. We are supposed to see the affects of colonialism and cultural displacement through this man and the dynamics of his family.

**Spoiler alert***

Once he does get his own house, toward the very end of the novel, he has been taken advantage of. He has paid too much for a poorly constructed home. As a reader, you know the story will end this way, that there won't be a triumphant ending, but you do wish for that. And despite the home's problems, he and his family do take some comfort and joy in the house and the garden they plant. There is a little bit of Candide in the ending.

Story of an ordinary man's life - 3/5

This book narrates story of a man who is like any other man we meet on day to day basis, who always dreams of making big in life, to provide sufficiently for the family and have a place of his own which he can call "Home".

The story revolves around a man named Mohan Biswas, who was born into a poor family and was declared inauspicious at the time of birth itself by family priest. He goes around doing many odd jobs in order to make a name for himself, until he stumbles upon a place from where he never actually leaves till the very last days of his life.

This is a good book in terms of writing, but the pace is slow, sometimes very slow but the fiction keeps growing, I would like to call this book as casual one, but this is a good casual you can grab if you are into fiction and storytelling.

I once read a novel where the main character was said to have been shipwrecked even before he had a ship. V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr. Biswas introduces the reader to Mohan Biswas, someone who seems in a state of perpetual homelessness, even when he has a home.



Most of the places where Mr. Biswas (called this from birth) takes shelter are presided over by in-laws, but through the years he does make several attempts at securing a home, with each house ending in shambles, forcing Biswas to again seek refuge elsewhere.

Such is the life of an Indian boy with an upper-caste Brahmin background born under ill omens, a 6-fingered breach baby afflicted with eczema, scabs & malnutrition, destined to be a wanderer for 35 years of his fairly brief life in Trinidad.

A House for Mr. Biswas is a tale of a dysfunctional family, in fact several of them, largely situated at the wealthy Mrs. Tulsi's "Hanuman House", named after the Indian monkey god. The large building is occupied by fractious extended members of an extended family, all in search of space to live, if not to thrive.

Two of Mrs. Tulsi's male children are referred to as "the gods" but seen as monkeys by Biswas & others, putting his family always at odds with the family of his in-laws. Mr. Biswas' father's family had been brought from India to Trinidad but never felt settled on the Caribbean island, a rootlessness that is perpetuated by Biswas.

When Biswas takes a wife, it causes him to feel that the marriage was by way of a misunderstanding & a certain distinct shyness or language insufficiency on his part, with Mrs. Tulsi, the proprietor of Hanuman House acting as marriage broker for her daughter Shama.

This is one of many instances where Biswas feels less than in charge of his destiny, harboring misgivings for his lot in life. The feeling is quite mutual & when Biswas buys an expensive doll's house for his daughter Savi, his wife destroys it in a fit of anger, just another example of housing impermanence.

There is a muddle of names in the Naipaul novel & without a scorecard, so to speak, it is difficult to keep track of their relationship to each other. Beyond that, the timeframe is not clear early on, until eventually it becomes apparent that WWII shortages have further isolated the people of Trinidad.

There are darker-skinned people as well on the island, one known for its diversity but Naipaul's narrative takes little note of them, until one is enlisted to build a house for Mr. Biswas. I also missed the aromas & textures that I sense are characteristic of Trinidad.



Almost every detail is focused on the life of the Biswas family, causing me to feel that the setting could have been almost anywhere, rather than on the vibrant, multi-ethnic island of Trinidad, at that point still a British colony. That said, there is an interesting point made about many within Trinidad's Indian population converting to Christianity, in part because they desire an end to the caste system and aspire to greater sexual equality, with perhaps a greater influence of western culture than would have been likely in India, the isolation from Indian traditions contributing to this. Biswas always was said to have yearned for the outside world & eagerly read novels that took him there.

In fact, a curious aspect of Naipaul's novel is the importance of books within the mindset of Mr. Biswas. The Roman-Catholic wife of a small sugar estate owner gives Biswas copies of Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and The Discourses of Epictetus, books that loom large in his life. There also are many references to British or Anglo-Trinidadian school books, including Nelson's West Indian Arithmetics, Nelson's West Indian Geography, Collins Clear Type Shakespeare and Bell's Standard Elocutionist.

These books elevate a boy with few natural opportunities a wrung or more above what might have been his station in life, though Biswas continuously bristles against his lack of meaningful options in life. Among his woes are a wife he doesn't relate to, 4 children, houses Biswas endeavored to make his own rendered incomplete due to lack of funds, ravaged by nature, bad timing & even some resentful neighbors.

He was oppressed by a sense of loss: not of present loss but of something missed in the past. He was beset by alien growths, alien affections, which fed on him & called him away from that part of him which yet remained purely himself, that part which had for long been submerged. What had happened was locked away in time. But it was an error, not a part of truth. He felt exposed & vulnerable. He reflected on the unreality of his life & wished to make a mark on the wall as proof of his existence.

But there is something of Sisyphus in Mr. Biswas, as he does not relent & keeps searching for an outlet. By chance, work as a sign painter leads to a position as a newspaper columnist when the editor comes to see that Biswas has hidden talent in spite of a weak resume. This leads to an increase in status as well as pay & the purchase of a car to replace the decrepit Enfield bike he has used for transport. Journalism becomes an outlet & later a typewriter causes him to aim at becoming an author. His columns are irregular in tone & occasionally bombastic, causing Biswas to be seen as both a wit & a madman.



Initially, the Naipaul novel seemed less than a "page-turner", being quite a struggle for me. Words & syntax often seemed irregular or oddly phrased. More importantly none of the characters seemed to have ennobling qualities, each appearing rather stiff & lacking warmth. This is however a 550+ page work and in time & with effort on the part of this reader, it seemed to come together and even to have humorous touches, justifying its status as a classic novel, perhaps the best attempt at fiction by V.S. Naipaul, a Nobel laureate.

I gradually settled in to a greater appreciation of Mr. Biswas & his family, particularly when, at long last, near novel's end our namesake character finally purchases a more lasting house for himself & his family, a tall & square house on Sikkim Street. Yes, it was a rather quixotic & financially unstable purchase but it brought the family together & helped to blot out the memory of the past harshness of their reality.

The mind, while it is sound, is merciful. And rapidly the memories of Hanuman House, the Chase, Green Vale, Shorthills, the Tulsi house in Port of Spain would become jumbled, blurred; events would be telescoped, many forgotten. Occasionally, a nerve of memory would be touched--a puddle reflecting the blue sky after rain, a pack of tumbled cards, the fumbling with a shoelace, the smell of a new car, the sound of a stiff wind through the trees, the scent & colors of a toy shop, the taste of milk & prunes--and a fragment of forgotten experience would be dislodged, isolated, puzzling.

In a time of new separations & yearnings, in a library grown suddenly dark, the hailstones beating against the windows, the marbled endpaper of a dusty leather-bound book would disturb & it would be the week before Christmas in the Tulsi Store. Later & very slowly, in securer times of different stresses, when the memories had lost the power to hurt, with pain or joy, they would fall into place & give back the past.

A House for Mr. Biswas is not a novel that will please every reader but the prose is at times wondrous, especially in the last 1/3 of the book. The novel is monumental not in broad scope but in slowly-evolving details of a particular kind of common man in Trinidad who possesses uncommon attributes, living amidst a displaced people not quite divorced from their Indian roots, speaking English & Hindi alternately, still under the British colonial flag in a Caribbean land.



While I enjoyed Naipaul's A Bend in the River more, it may have been because I felt a greater sense of place with that novel's setting in Africa, not far from where I once lived. So, 4 stars+ for Mr. Biswas & Mr. Naipaul, with the novel especially recommended for readers who can manage not to be distracted by the details of the late author's personal life.

*In my Everyman's Library edition of the Naipaul novel, there is an excellent introduction by Karl Miller. I also read a well-researched biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French,The World Is What It Is.

**Photo images within my review are of the author, V.S. Naipaul; some faces of the Indian diaspora at Trinidad; a painting of a gathering of Trinidadian Indians for a Hindu festival; & a map of Trinidad/Tobago.

The author has stated publicly that his work is superior to any by women writers. Imagine my disappointment.

It took me over a month to read about the mild misadventures of Mr. Biswas and his efforts to gain a house of his own. (I'm reminded of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair.) There were a few pleasurable episodes (especially during Mr. Biswas' early career as a roving, loose-with-the-facts journalist), but because the book is mostly about a querulous child-man, living in a house of equally querulous childish in-laws and their petty squabbles and name-calling, it was a chore. I suppose ultimately Naipaul was saying something about the simple dignity in having a place to call one's own and the indignity of poverty, and perhaps also how Colonialism made children out of men, but Mr. Biswas' personality was so off-putting that it's only now that I think of that message. While reading it mostly I thought, "How many more pages?"

Then, as I turned off the light, I thought instead of other writers I love, "Jane Austen, Willa Cather, Margaret Atwood, Edith Wharton, Marjorie Kinan Rawlings, Katherine Anne Porter, Dorothy Parker, Harriet Doerr, Toni Morrison,......."

What did I know about Trinidad before I opened these pages? Little beyond being part of the West Indies cricket team, there being a healthy Indian population and that it had a long connection to sugar production, and trafficked in slavery.

There are mixed feelings towards this book from other reviewers, and to be honest, my review is also mixed. In the grand scheme upon completion, I enjoyed what I had learnt about Indian life in Trinidad from the WW1 to the 1950s; but during the reading, I became bored, and hated the Tulsis and all they stood for. Being such a ground breaking novel at the time, I can understand editors not wanting to cut out much, but on retrospect, a good 100 pages of the trite doings of that villainous family could easily have been sliced off.

The Tulsis – mean spirited, vain glorious and tight bound, demanding complete loyality, but without ever earning it. They manipulate Biswas in so many ways, and of course Seth, the eldest son in law is the most evil. I love the use of the name Seth – the good boy in the Adam-Eve household, here he acts out other evil deeds not thought by Abel or Cain! Biswas spends so much of his life getting away from the clutches of this family, only to succeed and die.

I really enjoyed the side pieces of info Naipaul offers us – the American invasion during WW2, and its impact on the culture and economy afterwards; the obsession of going to the mother country (England) to advance oneself, but at the same time having the dichotomous love/ hate relationship with the spiritual home of India. The comments that the Hindus from India couldn’t speak Hindi properly had me laughing, and made me think of the Greek diaspora in Australia, and their disappointments on returning to Greece. And of course, I loved the descriptions of the social fabric of Trinidad during the period of the novel, regardless of race, but particularly how the Indians fitted in with the hierarchy of island life – both within the status of other Indians, and the greater social strata.

So- overall, I hunted for things I liked, although that revolting family dominate the narrative for close to 85% of the book. It most certainly deserves being part of the great English Novel canon.