A House for Mr Biswas

Heart-rending and darkly comic, V.S. Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels, a classic that evokes a man's quest for autonomy against the backdrop of postcolonial Trinidad.

Mr Biswas has been told since the day of his birth that misfortune will follow him – and so it has. Meaning 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 married to her. But in spite of his endless setbacks, Mr Biswas is determined to achieve independence, and so he begins the gruelling struggle to buy a home of his own.

Now part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the very best of modern literature.

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 non-fiction, 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.