"A House for Mr. Biswas"

Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad (V.S.)Naipaul has always been a writer that has inspired strong reactions - both positive and negative. He was born in 1932 in Trinidad, the son of indentured laborers from India and has been living in England ever since winning a scholarship to Oxford. He received the Nobel prize for literature in 2001. He has always been hailed as a master of the craft, but his freely expressed thoughts on third world countries, Africa, Islam, etc have given pause to even his most ardent supporters.

Recently the New Yorker had a book review of a new, authorized, biography and I learnt some more unsavory aspects of his personal life. Even so, I feel compelled to write about his masterpiece - "A House for Mr.Biswas." This book was published in 1961 and tells the story of a Hindu Brahmin, Manoj Biswas, living in Trinidad, whose only goal in life is to have a house of his own. The story is very simple and indeed you know the ending right away - the book opens with the death of Biswas in his own house. So you already know that Biswas does get his own house and that he dies at the end. But the charm is in the telling - its writing of the highest quality by somebody who is a keen observer, albeit not a very sympathetic one. The character of Biswas is modeled loosely on Naipaul's father and this may have contributed to the nuanced portrayals. For anybody who enjoys good writing, this book is a must-read. The book should especially resonate with people of Indian origin.

Naipaul of course has written a lot about India - he started off with the rather negative "An Area of Darkness," moved grudgingly towards a more appreciative "India - A Million Mutinies Now" and has more recently been somewhat more 'ungrudging' in his praise for India.