A House for Mr Biswas, by Nobel and Booker-Prize winning author V.S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence. The book is striking in its lush and sensual descriptions of Trinidad and was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923-2005.
The second of two V.S. Naipaul novels to be licensed exclusively to Naxos AudioBooks, with the first being The Mimic Men, released in April.
Born in India and educated at Oxford, reader Sam Dastor's life bears parallels to the author's, giving him a deeper understanding of the themes and style of the book.
Former government minister Ralph Singh is the perpetual outsider: displaced, disillusioned and now living in exile, Ralph reflects on his earlier life and the searing effects of colonialism. Ralph's constant estrangement sees him ever attempting to fit into various communities, only to find home in more transient spaces. Born on the tropical island of Isabella, he is one of West India's many 'Mimic Men'. Booker and Nobel Prize-winning author V.S. Naipaul's sixth novel is a brutal and perceptive commentary on the postcolonial condition of the colonial man.
Born in Trinidad of Indian descent, a resident of England for his entire adult life, and a prodigious traveler, V. S. Naipaul has always faced the challenges of 'fitting one civilization to another.' Here, he takes us into his sometimes inadvertent process of creative and intellectual assimilation, which has shaped both his writing and his life.
In a probing narrative that is part meditation and part remembrance, Naiapul discusses the writers to whom he was exposed early on and his first encounters with literary culture. He looks at what we have retained and what we have forgotten of the classical world, and he illuminates the ways in which Indian writers such as Gandhi and Nehru both reveal and conceal themselves and their nation. Full of humor and privileged insight, this is an eloquent, intimate exploration into the configuration of a writer's mind.
'As ever, Naipaul's sentences are tightly coiled and muscular; they embody the very qualities they praise'.His characteristic excursions into the byways of history and autobiography are often revelatory, opening up new vistas'.this is a brilliant work from a man who more than anybody else embodies what it means to be a writer.''The Observer
This novel by a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature takes us deeply into the life of one man who comes to live in an isolated African town at the bend of a great river, a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own traditions.
'A brilliant novel.''New York Times
Nobel Prize winner V. S. Naipaul, one of the world's most acclaimed authors, effortlessly tackles provocative ideas that lesser novelists shy away from'and always leaves his audience with something to think about. Willie Chandran feels as though the life he lives is not his own. But his listlessness washes away in a flood of encouragement from his radically political sister. Inspired, he joins an underground liberation movement in India. But after years of revolution and incarceration, he grows disillusioned and returns to England, still hoping to find his true self.
'The best novelist now writing in English '''New York Review of Books
