A House for Mr. Biswas
Naipaul’s breakthrough novel is a marvellous comic tale of a Trinidadian of Indian descent striving to improve his lot. Continually making big plans for himself he constantly finds himself thwarted by his wife’s family and by his own ineptitude and over-reaching ambition.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
9mentions
6people
2017–2025years
78% recommend22% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Tangential novel recommendation: A House for Mr Biswas (V.S. Naipaul)
- - A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul: explores themes of belonging, ownership, home, independence, escape, freedom.
- Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: explores love in it's many forms.
- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: about love, the absurdity of life, beginnings and ends.
- Miles by Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe: about jazz and the life of it's greatest creator.
- Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson: ramblings of a pope.
- This is quite a tangent (it's a novel, not some non-fiction deep-dive) but A House for Mr Biswas (VS Naipaul) is a great book that I'd recommend, your comment just reminded me of it.
- Perhaps a bit cliche, but I started on a "Great Russian novels" marathon at the start of the year and have read all of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.
Brothers Karamazov was my favorite. I liked ''War and Peace too', and can somewhat understand why they call 'Anna Karenina' one of the best books ever written.
Just recently, I finished 'Doctor Zhivago', and 'Fathers and Sons', and 'The Master and Margarita'. I thought they were all brilliant.
Since the year is coming to and end, I hope to reread VS Naipaul's 'A House for Mr Biswas'. It's my favorite novel and I keep coming back to it again and again.
- Naipaul is my favorite writer. A House for Mr. Biswas is a book I keep coming back to every year or so. It's deep, humorous and very melancholic. Miguel Street is the funniest book I've read. Naipaul is great!
- 'A House for Mr. Biswas' by V.S Naipaul - Beautiful book in every way. I can't remember the last time I read a book this good. I'd read most of his shorter books before but never finished this one for one reason or another. I'm glad I did.
'Shira' by Shmuel Yosef Agnon - Was introduced to Agnon by an old friend. Having not read any major works by Israeli writers(especially those set in early 201th century Israel), I found this book to be very beautiful also. Did read some of his other material, a collection of short stories. Hope to dive in further when time permits.
