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A House for Mr. Biswas

A Novel

Part of Vintage International

Author V. S. Naipaul
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$18.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Mar 13, 2001 | 576 Pages | 978-0-375-70716-2
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  • English > Comparative Literature > Modern Comparative Literature
  • English > Comparative Literature: Latin American and Caribbean > Caribbean
  • English > Literature > British Literature – 20th Century
  • English > Literature > British Literature – Novel
  • About
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Winner of the Nobel Prize 

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul’s father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century’s finest novels.

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.


“Naipaul has constructed a marvelous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power.” —Newsweek
I. Pastoral

Shortly before he was born there had been another quarrel between Mr Biswas's mother Bipti and his father Raghu, and Bipti had taken her three children and walked all the way in the hot sun to the village where her mother Bissoondaye lived. There Bipti had cried and told the old story of Raghu's miserliness: how he kept a check on every cent he gave her, counted every biscuit in the tin, and how he would walk ten miles rather than pay a cart a penny.

Bipti's father, futile with asthma, propped himself up on his string bed and said, as he always did on unhappy occasions, 'Fate. There is nothing we can do about it.'

No one paid him any attention. Fate had brought him from India to the sugar-estate, aged him quickly and left him to die in a crumbling mud hut in the swamplands; yet he spoke of Fate often and affectionately, as though, merely by surviving, he had been particularly favoured.

While the old man talked on, Bissoondaye sent for the midwife, made a meal for Bipti's children and prepared beds for them. When the midwife came the children were asleep. Some time later they were awakened by the screams of Mr Biswas and the shrieks of the midwife.

'What is it?' the old man asked. 'Boy or girl?'

'Boy, boy,' the midwife cried. 'But what sort of boy? Six-fingered, and born in the wrong way.'

The old man groaned and Bissoondaye said, 'I knew it. There is no luck for me.'

At once, though it was night and the way was lonely, she left the hut and walked to the next village, where there was a hedge of cactus. She brought back leaves of cactus, cut them into strips and hung a strip over every door, every window, every aperture through which an evil spirit might enter the hut.

But the midwife said, 'Whatever you do, this boy will eat up his own mother and father.'

The next morning, when in the bright light it seemed that all evil spirits had surely left the earth, the pundit came, a small, thin man with a sharp satirical face and a dismissing manner. Bissoondaye seated him on the string bed, from which the old man had been turned out, and told him what had happened.

'Hm. Born in the wrong way. At midnight, you said.'

Bissoondaye had no means of telling the time, but both she and the midwife had assumed that it was midnight, the inauspicious hour.

Abruptly, as Bissoondaye sat before him with bowed and covered head, the pundit brightened, 'Oh, well. It doesn't matter. There are always ways and means of getting over these unhappy things.' He undid his red bundle and took out his astrological almanac, a sheaf of loose thick leaves, long and narrow, between boards. The leaves were brown with age and their musty smell was mixed with that of the red and ochre sandalwood paste that had been spattered on them. The pundit lifted a leaf, read a little, wet his forefinger on his tongue and lifted another leaf.

At last he said, 'First of all, the features of this unfortunate boy. He will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. The boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well. It is hard to be sure about those gaps between the teeth. They might mean only one of those things or they might mean all three.'

'What about the six fingers, pundit?'

'That's a shocking sign, of course. The only thing I can advise is to keep him away from trees and water. Particularly water.'

'Never bath him?'

'I don't mean exactly that.' He raised his right hand, bunched the fingers and, with his head on one side, said slowly, 'One has to interpret what the book says.' He tapped the wobbly almanac with his left hand. 'And when the book says water, I think it means water in its natural form.'

'Natural form.'

'Natural form,' the pundit repeated, but uncertainly. 'I mean,' he said quickly, and with some annoyance, 'keep him away from rivers and ponds. And of course the sea. And another thing,' He added with satisfaction. 'He will have an unlucky sneeze.' He began to pack the long leaves of his almanac. 'Much of the evil this boy will undoubtedly bring will be mitigated if his father is forbidden to see him for twenty-one days.'

'That will be easy,' Bissoondaye said, speaking with emotion for the first time.

'On the twenty-first day the father must see the boy. But not in the flesh.'

'In a mirror, pundit?'

'I would consider that ill-advised. Use a brass plate. Scour it well.'

'Of course.'

'You must fill this brass plate with coconut oil--which, by the way, you must make yourself from coconuts you have collected with your own hands--and in the reflection on this oil the father must see his son's face.' He tied the almanac together and rolled it in the red cotton wrapper which was also spattered with sandalwood paste. 'I believe that is all.'

'We forgot one thing, punditji. The name.'

'I can't help you completely there. But it seems to me that a perfectly safe prefix would be Mo. It is up to you to think of something to add to that.'

'Oh, punditji, you must help me. I can only think of hun.'

The pundit was surprised and genuinely pleased. 'But that is excellent. Excellent. Mohun. I couldn't have chosen better myself. For Mohun, as you know, means the beloved, and was the name given by the milkmaids to Lord Krishna.' His eyes softened at the thought of the legend and for a moment he appeared to forget Bissoondaye and Mr Biswas.

From the knot at the end of her veil Bissoondaye took out a florin and offered it to the pundit, mumbling her regret that she could not give more. The pundit said that she had done her best and was not to worry. In fact he was pleased; he had expected less.

Mr Biswas lost his sixth finger before he was nine days old. It simply came off one night and Bipti had an unpleasant turn when, shaking out the sheets one morning, she saw this tiny finger tumble to the ground. Bissoondaye thought this an excellent sign and buried the finger behind the cowpen at the back of the house, not far from where she had buried Mr Biswas's navel-string.

In the days that followed Mr Biswas was treated with attention and respect. His brothers and sisters were slapped if they disturbed his sleep, and the flexibility of his limbs was regarded as a matter of importance. Morning and evening he was massaged with coconut oil. All his joints were exercised; his arms and legs were folded diagonally across his red shining body; the big toe of his right foot was made to touch his left shoulder, the big toe of his left foot was made to touch his right shoulder, and both toes were made to touch his nose; finally, all his limbs were bunched together over his belly and then, with a clap and a laugh, released.

Mr Biswas responded well to these exercises, and Bissoondaye became so confident that she decided to have a celebration on the ninth day. She invited people from the village and fed them. The pundit came and was unexpectedly gracious, though his manner suggested that but for his intervention there would have been no celebration at all. Jhagru, the barber, brought his drum, and Selochan did the Shiva dance in the cowpen, his body smeared all over with ash.

There was an unpleasant moment when Raghu, Mr Biswas's father, appeared. He had walked; his dhoti and jacket were sweated and dusty. 'Well, this is very nice,' he said. 'Celebrating. And where is the father?'

'Leave this house at once,' Bissoondaye said, coming out of the kitchen at the side. 'Father! What sort of father do you call yourself, when you drive your wife away every time she gets heavy-footed?'

'That is none of your business,' Raghu said. 'Where is my son?'

'Go ahead. God has paid you back for your boasting and your meanness. Go and see your son. He will eat you up. Six-fingered, born in the wrong way. Go in and see him. He has an unlucky sneeze as well.'

Raghu halted. 'Unlucky sneeze?'

'I have warned you. You can only see him on the twenty-first day. If you do anything stupid now the responsibility will be yours.'

From his string bed the old man muttered abuse at Raghu. 'Shameless, wicked. When I see the behaviour of this man I begin to feel that the Black Age has come.'

The subsequent quarrel and threats cleared the air. Raghu confessed he had been in the wrong and had already suffered much for it. Bipti said she was willing to go back to him. And he agreed to come again on the twenty-first day.

To prepare for that day Bissoondaye began collecting dry coconuts. She husked them, grated the kernels and set about extracting the oil the pundit had prescribed. It was a long job of boiling and skimming and boiling again, and it was surprising how many coconuts it took to make a little oil. But the oil was ready in time, and Raghu came, neatly dressed, his hair plastered flat and shining, his moustache trimmed, and he was very correct as he took off his hat and went into the dark inner room of the hut which smelled warmly of oil and old thatch. He held his hat on the right side of his face and looked down into the oil in the brass plate. Mr Biswas, hidden from his father by the hat, and well wrapped from head to foot, was held face downwards over the oil. He didn't like it; he furrowed his forehead, shut his eyes tight and bawled. The oil rippled, clear amber, broke up the reflection of Mr Biswas's face, already distorted with rage, and the viewing was over.

A few days later Bipti and her children returned home. And there Mr Biswas's importance steadily diminished. The time came when even the daily massage ceased.

But he still carried weight. They never forgot that he was an unlucky child and that his sneeze was particularly unlucky. Mr Biswas caught cold easily and in the rainy season threatened his family with destitution. If, before Raghu left for the sugar-estate, Mr Biswas sneezed, Raghu remained at home, worked on his vegetable garden in the morning and spent the afternoon making walking-sticks and sabots, or carving designs on the hafts of cutlasses and the heads of walking-sticks. His favourite design was a pair of wellingtons; he had never owned wellingtons but had seen them on the overseer. Whatever he did, Raghu never left the house. Even so, minor mishaps often followed Mr Biswas's sneeze: threepence lost in the shopping, the breaking of a bottle, the upsetting of a dish. Once Mr Biswas sneezed on three mornings in succession.

'This boy will eat up his family in truth,' Raghu said.

One morning, just after Raghu had crossed the gutter that ran between the road and his yard, he suddenly stopped. Mr Biswas had sneezed. Bipti ran out and said, 'It doesn't matter. He sneezed when you were already on the road.'

'But I heard him. Distinctly.'

Bipti persuaded him to go to work. About an hour or two later, while she was cleaning the rice for the midday meal, she heard shouts from the road and went out to find Raghu lying in an ox-cart, his right leg swathed in bloody bandages. He was groaning, not from pain, but from anger. The man who had brought him refused to help him into the yard: Mr Biswas's sneeze was too well known. Raghu had to limp in leaning on Bipti's shoulder.

'This boy will make us all paupers,' Raghu said.

He spoke from a deep fear. Though he saved and made himself and his family go without many things, he never ceased to feel that destitution was very nearly upon him. The more he hoarded, the more he felt he had to waste and to lose, and the more careful he became.

Every Saturday he lined up with the other labourers outside the estate office to collect his pay. The overseer sat at a little table, on which his khaki cork hat rested, wasteful of space, but a symbol of wealth. On his left sat the Indian clerk, important, stern, precise, with small neat hands that wrote small neat figures in black ink and red ink in the tall ledger. As the clerk entered figures and called out names and amounts in his high, precise voice, the overseer selected coins from the columns of silver and the heaps of copper in front of him, and with greater deliberation extracted notes from the blue one-dollar stacks, the smaller red two-dollar stack and the very shallow green five-dollar stack. Few labourers earned five dollars a week; the notes were there to pay those who were collecting their wives' or husbands' wages as well as their own. Around the overseer's cork hat, and seeming to guard it, there were stiff blue paper bags, neatly serrated at the top, printed with large figures, and standing upright from the weight of coin inside them. Clean round perforations gave glimpses of the coin and, Raghu had been told, allowed it to breathe.

These bags fascinated Raghu. He had managed to get a few and after many months and a little cheating--turning a shilling into twelve pennies, for example--he had filled them. Thereafter he had never been able to stop. No one, not even Bipti, knew where he hid these bags; but the word had got around that he buried his money and was possibly the richest man in the village. Such talk alarmed Raghu and, to counter it, he increased his austerities.

Mr Biswas grew. The limbs that had been massaged and oiled twice a day now remained dusty and muddy and unwashed for days. The malnutrition that had given him the sixth finger of misfortune pursued him now with eczema and sores that swelled and burst and scabbed and burst again, until they stank; his ankles and knees and wrists and elbows were in particular afflicted, and the sores left marks like vaccination scars. Malnutrition gave him the shallowest of chests, the thinnest of limbs; it stunted his growth and gave him a soft rising belly. And yet, perceptibly, he grew. He was never aware of being hungry. It never bothered him that he didn't go to school. Life was unpleasant only because the pundit had forbidden him to go near ponds and rivers. Raghu was an excellent swimmer and Bipti wished him to train Mr Biswas's brothers. So every Sunday morning Raghu took Pratap and Prasad to swim in a stream not far off, and Mr Biswas stayed at home, to be bathed by Bipti and have all his sores ripped open by her strong rubbing with the blue soap. But in an hour or two the redness and rawness of the sores had faded, scabs were beginning to form, and Mr Biswas was happy again. He played at house with his sister Dehuti. They mixed yellow earth with water and made mud fireplaces; they cooked a few grains of rice in empty condensed milk tins; and, using the tops of tins as baking-stones, they made rotis.

In these amusements Prasad and Pratap took no part. Nine and eleven respectively, they were past such frivolities, and had already begun to work, joyfully cooperating with the estates in breaking the law about the employment of children. They had developed adult mannerisms. They spoke with blades of grass between their teeth; they drank noisily and sighed, passing the back of their hands across their mouths; they ate enormous quantities of rice, patted their bellies and belched; and every Saturday they stood up in line to draw their pay. Their job was to look after the buffaloes that drew the cane-carts. The buffaloes' pleasance was a muddy, cloyingly sweet pool not far from the factory; here, with a dozen other thin-limbed boys, noisy, happy, over-energetic and with a full sense of their importance, Pratap and Prasad moved all day in the mud among the buffaloes. When they came home their legs were caked with the buffalo mud which, on drying, had turned white, so that they looked like the trees in fire-stations and police-stations which are washed with white lime up to the middle of their trunks.
Copyright © 2001 by V. S. Naipaul. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
  • WINNER | 2001
    Nobel Prize
  • WINNER | 2001
    Nobel Prize
  • WINNER | 2001
    Nobel Prize
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 nonfiction, 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 died in 2018. View titles by V. S. Naipaul

About

Winner of the Nobel Prize 

The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, A House for Mr. Biswas is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul’s father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century’s finest novels.

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.


“Naipaul has constructed a marvelous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power.” —Newsweek

Excerpt

I. Pastoral

Shortly before he was born there had been another quarrel between Mr Biswas's mother Bipti and his father Raghu, and Bipti had taken her three children and walked all the way in the hot sun to the village where her mother Bissoondaye lived. There Bipti had cried and told the old story of Raghu's miserliness: how he kept a check on every cent he gave her, counted every biscuit in the tin, and how he would walk ten miles rather than pay a cart a penny.

Bipti's father, futile with asthma, propped himself up on his string bed and said, as he always did on unhappy occasions, 'Fate. There is nothing we can do about it.'

No one paid him any attention. Fate had brought him from India to the sugar-estate, aged him quickly and left him to die in a crumbling mud hut in the swamplands; yet he spoke of Fate often and affectionately, as though, merely by surviving, he had been particularly favoured.

While the old man talked on, Bissoondaye sent for the midwife, made a meal for Bipti's children and prepared beds for them. When the midwife came the children were asleep. Some time later they were awakened by the screams of Mr Biswas and the shrieks of the midwife.

'What is it?' the old man asked. 'Boy or girl?'

'Boy, boy,' the midwife cried. 'But what sort of boy? Six-fingered, and born in the wrong way.'

The old man groaned and Bissoondaye said, 'I knew it. There is no luck for me.'

At once, though it was night and the way was lonely, she left the hut and walked to the next village, where there was a hedge of cactus. She brought back leaves of cactus, cut them into strips and hung a strip over every door, every window, every aperture through which an evil spirit might enter the hut.

But the midwife said, 'Whatever you do, this boy will eat up his own mother and father.'

The next morning, when in the bright light it seemed that all evil spirits had surely left the earth, the pundit came, a small, thin man with a sharp satirical face and a dismissing manner. Bissoondaye seated him on the string bed, from which the old man had been turned out, and told him what had happened.

'Hm. Born in the wrong way. At midnight, you said.'

Bissoondaye had no means of telling the time, but both she and the midwife had assumed that it was midnight, the inauspicious hour.

Abruptly, as Bissoondaye sat before him with bowed and covered head, the pundit brightened, 'Oh, well. It doesn't matter. There are always ways and means of getting over these unhappy things.' He undid his red bundle and took out his astrological almanac, a sheaf of loose thick leaves, long and narrow, between boards. The leaves were brown with age and their musty smell was mixed with that of the red and ochre sandalwood paste that had been spattered on them. The pundit lifted a leaf, read a little, wet his forefinger on his tongue and lifted another leaf.

At last he said, 'First of all, the features of this unfortunate boy. He will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. The boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well. It is hard to be sure about those gaps between the teeth. They might mean only one of those things or they might mean all three.'

'What about the six fingers, pundit?'

'That's a shocking sign, of course. The only thing I can advise is to keep him away from trees and water. Particularly water.'

'Never bath him?'

'I don't mean exactly that.' He raised his right hand, bunched the fingers and, with his head on one side, said slowly, 'One has to interpret what the book says.' He tapped the wobbly almanac with his left hand. 'And when the book says water, I think it means water in its natural form.'

'Natural form.'

'Natural form,' the pundit repeated, but uncertainly. 'I mean,' he said quickly, and with some annoyance, 'keep him away from rivers and ponds. And of course the sea. And another thing,' He added with satisfaction. 'He will have an unlucky sneeze.' He began to pack the long leaves of his almanac. 'Much of the evil this boy will undoubtedly bring will be mitigated if his father is forbidden to see him for twenty-one days.'

'That will be easy,' Bissoondaye said, speaking with emotion for the first time.

'On the twenty-first day the father must see the boy. But not in the flesh.'

'In a mirror, pundit?'

'I would consider that ill-advised. Use a brass plate. Scour it well.'

'Of course.'

'You must fill this brass plate with coconut oil--which, by the way, you must make yourself from coconuts you have collected with your own hands--and in the reflection on this oil the father must see his son's face.' He tied the almanac together and rolled it in the red cotton wrapper which was also spattered with sandalwood paste. 'I believe that is all.'

'We forgot one thing, punditji. The name.'

'I can't help you completely there. But it seems to me that a perfectly safe prefix would be Mo. It is up to you to think of something to add to that.'

'Oh, punditji, you must help me. I can only think of hun.'

The pundit was surprised and genuinely pleased. 'But that is excellent. Excellent. Mohun. I couldn't have chosen better myself. For Mohun, as you know, means the beloved, and was the name given by the milkmaids to Lord Krishna.' His eyes softened at the thought of the legend and for a moment he appeared to forget Bissoondaye and Mr Biswas.

From the knot at the end of her veil Bissoondaye took out a florin and offered it to the pundit, mumbling her regret that she could not give more. The pundit said that she had done her best and was not to worry. In fact he was pleased; he had expected less.

Mr Biswas lost his sixth finger before he was nine days old. It simply came off one night and Bipti had an unpleasant turn when, shaking out the sheets one morning, she saw this tiny finger tumble to the ground. Bissoondaye thought this an excellent sign and buried the finger behind the cowpen at the back of the house, not far from where she had buried Mr Biswas's navel-string.

In the days that followed Mr Biswas was treated with attention and respect. His brothers and sisters were slapped if they disturbed his sleep, and the flexibility of his limbs was regarded as a matter of importance. Morning and evening he was massaged with coconut oil. All his joints were exercised; his arms and legs were folded diagonally across his red shining body; the big toe of his right foot was made to touch his left shoulder, the big toe of his left foot was made to touch his right shoulder, and both toes were made to touch his nose; finally, all his limbs were bunched together over his belly and then, with a clap and a laugh, released.

Mr Biswas responded well to these exercises, and Bissoondaye became so confident that she decided to have a celebration on the ninth day. She invited people from the village and fed them. The pundit came and was unexpectedly gracious, though his manner suggested that but for his intervention there would have been no celebration at all. Jhagru, the barber, brought his drum, and Selochan did the Shiva dance in the cowpen, his body smeared all over with ash.

There was an unpleasant moment when Raghu, Mr Biswas's father, appeared. He had walked; his dhoti and jacket were sweated and dusty. 'Well, this is very nice,' he said. 'Celebrating. And where is the father?'

'Leave this house at once,' Bissoondaye said, coming out of the kitchen at the side. 'Father! What sort of father do you call yourself, when you drive your wife away every time she gets heavy-footed?'

'That is none of your business,' Raghu said. 'Where is my son?'

'Go ahead. God has paid you back for your boasting and your meanness. Go and see your son. He will eat you up. Six-fingered, born in the wrong way. Go in and see him. He has an unlucky sneeze as well.'

Raghu halted. 'Unlucky sneeze?'

'I have warned you. You can only see him on the twenty-first day. If you do anything stupid now the responsibility will be yours.'

From his string bed the old man muttered abuse at Raghu. 'Shameless, wicked. When I see the behaviour of this man I begin to feel that the Black Age has come.'

The subsequent quarrel and threats cleared the air. Raghu confessed he had been in the wrong and had already suffered much for it. Bipti said she was willing to go back to him. And he agreed to come again on the twenty-first day.

To prepare for that day Bissoondaye began collecting dry coconuts. She husked them, grated the kernels and set about extracting the oil the pundit had prescribed. It was a long job of boiling and skimming and boiling again, and it was surprising how many coconuts it took to make a little oil. But the oil was ready in time, and Raghu came, neatly dressed, his hair plastered flat and shining, his moustache trimmed, and he was very correct as he took off his hat and went into the dark inner room of the hut which smelled warmly of oil and old thatch. He held his hat on the right side of his face and looked down into the oil in the brass plate. Mr Biswas, hidden from his father by the hat, and well wrapped from head to foot, was held face downwards over the oil. He didn't like it; he furrowed his forehead, shut his eyes tight and bawled. The oil rippled, clear amber, broke up the reflection of Mr Biswas's face, already distorted with rage, and the viewing was over.

A few days later Bipti and her children returned home. And there Mr Biswas's importance steadily diminished. The time came when even the daily massage ceased.

But he still carried weight. They never forgot that he was an unlucky child and that his sneeze was particularly unlucky. Mr Biswas caught cold easily and in the rainy season threatened his family with destitution. If, before Raghu left for the sugar-estate, Mr Biswas sneezed, Raghu remained at home, worked on his vegetable garden in the morning and spent the afternoon making walking-sticks and sabots, or carving designs on the hafts of cutlasses and the heads of walking-sticks. His favourite design was a pair of wellingtons; he had never owned wellingtons but had seen them on the overseer. Whatever he did, Raghu never left the house. Even so, minor mishaps often followed Mr Biswas's sneeze: threepence lost in the shopping, the breaking of a bottle, the upsetting of a dish. Once Mr Biswas sneezed on three mornings in succession.

'This boy will eat up his family in truth,' Raghu said.

One morning, just after Raghu had crossed the gutter that ran between the road and his yard, he suddenly stopped. Mr Biswas had sneezed. Bipti ran out and said, 'It doesn't matter. He sneezed when you were already on the road.'

'But I heard him. Distinctly.'

Bipti persuaded him to go to work. About an hour or two later, while she was cleaning the rice for the midday meal, she heard shouts from the road and went out to find Raghu lying in an ox-cart, his right leg swathed in bloody bandages. He was groaning, not from pain, but from anger. The man who had brought him refused to help him into the yard: Mr Biswas's sneeze was too well known. Raghu had to limp in leaning on Bipti's shoulder.

'This boy will make us all paupers,' Raghu said.

He spoke from a deep fear. Though he saved and made himself and his family go without many things, he never ceased to feel that destitution was very nearly upon him. The more he hoarded, the more he felt he had to waste and to lose, and the more careful he became.

Every Saturday he lined up with the other labourers outside the estate office to collect his pay. The overseer sat at a little table, on which his khaki cork hat rested, wasteful of space, but a symbol of wealth. On his left sat the Indian clerk, important, stern, precise, with small neat hands that wrote small neat figures in black ink and red ink in the tall ledger. As the clerk entered figures and called out names and amounts in his high, precise voice, the overseer selected coins from the columns of silver and the heaps of copper in front of him, and with greater deliberation extracted notes from the blue one-dollar stacks, the smaller red two-dollar stack and the very shallow green five-dollar stack. Few labourers earned five dollars a week; the notes were there to pay those who were collecting their wives' or husbands' wages as well as their own. Around the overseer's cork hat, and seeming to guard it, there were stiff blue paper bags, neatly serrated at the top, printed with large figures, and standing upright from the weight of coin inside them. Clean round perforations gave glimpses of the coin and, Raghu had been told, allowed it to breathe.

These bags fascinated Raghu. He had managed to get a few and after many months and a little cheating--turning a shilling into twelve pennies, for example--he had filled them. Thereafter he had never been able to stop. No one, not even Bipti, knew where he hid these bags; but the word had got around that he buried his money and was possibly the richest man in the village. Such talk alarmed Raghu and, to counter it, he increased his austerities.

Mr Biswas grew. The limbs that had been massaged and oiled twice a day now remained dusty and muddy and unwashed for days. The malnutrition that had given him the sixth finger of misfortune pursued him now with eczema and sores that swelled and burst and scabbed and burst again, until they stank; his ankles and knees and wrists and elbows were in particular afflicted, and the sores left marks like vaccination scars. Malnutrition gave him the shallowest of chests, the thinnest of limbs; it stunted his growth and gave him a soft rising belly. And yet, perceptibly, he grew. He was never aware of being hungry. It never bothered him that he didn't go to school. Life was unpleasant only because the pundit had forbidden him to go near ponds and rivers. Raghu was an excellent swimmer and Bipti wished him to train Mr Biswas's brothers. So every Sunday morning Raghu took Pratap and Prasad to swim in a stream not far off, and Mr Biswas stayed at home, to be bathed by Bipti and have all his sores ripped open by her strong rubbing with the blue soap. But in an hour or two the redness and rawness of the sores had faded, scabs were beginning to form, and Mr Biswas was happy again. He played at house with his sister Dehuti. They mixed yellow earth with water and made mud fireplaces; they cooked a few grains of rice in empty condensed milk tins; and, using the tops of tins as baking-stones, they made rotis.

In these amusements Prasad and Pratap took no part. Nine and eleven respectively, they were past such frivolities, and had already begun to work, joyfully cooperating with the estates in breaking the law about the employment of children. They had developed adult mannerisms. They spoke with blades of grass between their teeth; they drank noisily and sighed, passing the back of their hands across their mouths; they ate enormous quantities of rice, patted their bellies and belched; and every Saturday they stood up in line to draw their pay. Their job was to look after the buffaloes that drew the cane-carts. The buffaloes' pleasance was a muddy, cloyingly sweet pool not far from the factory; here, with a dozen other thin-limbed boys, noisy, happy, over-energetic and with a full sense of their importance, Pratap and Prasad moved all day in the mud among the buffaloes. When they came home their legs were caked with the buffalo mud which, on drying, had turned white, so that they looked like the trees in fire-stations and police-stations which are washed with white lime up to the middle of their trunks.
Copyright © 2001 by V. S. Naipaul. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Awards

  • WINNER | 2001
    Nobel Prize
  • WINNER | 2001
    Nobel Prize
  • WINNER | 2001
    Nobel Prize

Author

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 nonfiction, 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 died in 2018. View titles by V. S. Naipaul

Additional formats

  • A House for Mr. Biswas
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-77655-6
    $12.99 US
    Ebook
    Vintage
    Oct 20, 2010
  • A House for Mr. Biswas
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    Introduction by Karl Miller
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-44458-9
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Nov 14, 1995
  • A House for Mr. Biswas
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    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-77655-6
    $12.99 US
    Ebook
    Vintage
    Oct 20, 2010
  • A House for Mr. Biswas
    A House for Mr. Biswas
    Introduction by Karl Miller
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-44458-9
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Nov 14, 1995

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    Italo Svevo
    978-0-375-72776-4
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 04, 2003
  • Collected Stories of Raymond Chandler
    Collected Stories of Raymond Chandler
    Introduction by John Bayley
    Raymond Chandler
    978-0-375-41500-5
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window
    The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window
    Introduction by Diane Johnson
    Raymond Chandler
    978-0-375-41501-2
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback
    The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback
    Introduction by Tom Hiney
    Raymond Chandler
    978-0-375-41502-9
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • Orwell: Essays
    Orwell: Essays
    Introduction by John Carey
    George Orwell
    978-0-375-41503-6
    $42.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • My Name Is Red
    My Name Is Red
    Orhan Pamuk
    978-0-375-70685-1
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 27, 2002
  • The Rainbow
    The Rainbow
    D.H. Lawrence
    978-0-375-75965-9
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Modern Library
    Feb 12, 2002
  • The Cairo Trilogy
    The Cairo Trilogy
    Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street; Introduction by Sabry Hafez
    Naguib Mahfouz
    978-0-375-41331-5
    $40.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 16, 2001
  • The Complete Henry Bech
    The Complete Henry Bech
    Introduction by Malcolm Bradbury
    John Updike
    978-0-375-41176-2
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 27, 2001
  • Of Human Bondage
    Of Human Bondage
    W. Somerset Maugham
    978-0-375-75315-2
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Modern Library
    Mar 02, 1999
  • The Diary of a Young Girl
    The Diary of a Young Girl
    The Definitive Edition
    Anne Frank
    978-0-553-57712-9
    $7.99 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Bantam
    Feb 03, 1997
  • Life and Fate
    Life and Fate
    Introduction by Polly Jones
    Vasily Grossman
    978-0-593-32126-3
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    May 24, 2022
  • The Pursuit of Love; Love in a Cold Climate
    The Pursuit of Love; Love in a Cold Climate
    Introduction by Laura Thompson
    Nancy Mitford
    978-0-593-32127-0
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 22, 2022
  • The Sun Also Rises
    The Sun Also Rises
    Introduction by Nicholas Gaskill
    Ernest Hemingway
    978-0-593-32128-7
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 22, 2022
  • The Bridge on the Drina
    The Bridge on the Drina
    Introduction by Misha Glenny
    Ivo Andric
    978-0-593-32022-8
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
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  • The Famished Road
    The Famished Road
    Introduction by Vanessa Guignery
    Ben Okri
    978-0-593-32025-9
    $26.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 07, 2021
  • The Great Gatsby
    The Great Gatsby
    Introduction by Malcolm Bradbury
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
    978-1-101-90829-7
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jan 05, 2021
  • Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore
    Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore
    Introduction by Lauren Groff
    Lorrie Moore
    978-0-375-71238-8
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 03, 2020
  • A Bend in the River
    A Bend in the River
    Introduction by Patrick Marnham
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-101-90819-8
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Dec 03, 2019
  • Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
    Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
    Introduction by John Banville
    Elizabeth Bowen
    978-1-101-90818-1
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2019
  • Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang
    Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang
    Introduction by Paul Giles
    Peter Carey
    978-1-101-90820-4
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 03, 2019
  • The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I
    The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume I
    American Tabloid, The Cold Six Thousand; Introduction by Thomas Mallon
    James Ellroy
    978-1-101-90804-4
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jun 04, 2019
  • The L.A. Quartet
    The L.A. Quartet
    The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, White Jazz; Introduction by Tom Nolan
    James Ellroy
    978-1-101-90805-1
    $40.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jun 04, 2019
  • The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume II
    The Underworld U.S.A. Trilogy, Volume II
    Blood's A Rover
    James Ellroy
    978-1-101-90814-3
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jun 04, 2019
  • Lucky Per
    Lucky Per
    Introduction by Garth Risk Hallberg
    Henrik Pontoppidan
    978-1-101-90809-9
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 16, 2019
  • All Quiet on the Western Front
    All Quiet on the Western Front
    Introduction by Norman Stone
    Erich Maria Remarque
    978-1-101-90808-2
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 18, 2018
  • Goodbye to All That
    Goodbye to All That
    Introduction by Miranda Seymour
    Robert Graves
    978-1-101-90798-6
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 24, 2018
  • The Bloody Chamber, Wise Children, Fireworks
    The Bloody Chamber, Wise Children, Fireworks
    Introduction by Joan Acocella
    Angela Carter
    978-1-101-90799-3
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 10, 2018
  • The Lover, Wartime Notebooks, Practicalities
    The Lover, Wartime Notebooks, Practicalities
    Introduction by Rachel Kushner
    Marguerite Duras
    978-1-101-90793-1
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Nov 14, 2017
  • Rebecca
    Rebecca
    Introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
    Daphne du Maurier
    978-1-101-90787-0
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Feb 07, 2017
  • The Collected Stories of Francine Prose
    The Collected Stories of Francine Prose
    Introduction by Francine Prose
    Mavis Gallant
    978-1-101-90763-4
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Aug 09, 2016
  • The Sea, the Sea; A Severed Head
    The Sea, the Sea; A Severed Head
    Introduction by Sarah Churchwell
    Iris Murdoch
    978-1-101-90766-5
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 05, 2016
  • Go Tell It on the Mountain
    Go Tell It on the Mountain
    Introduction by Edwidge Danticat
    James Baldwin
    978-1-101-90761-0
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 01, 2016
  • Giovanni's Room
    Giovanni's Room
    Introduction by Colm Tóibín
    James Baldwin
    978-1-101-90774-0
    $22.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 01, 2016
  • The Adventures of Augie March
    The Adventures of Augie March
    Introduction by Martin Amis
    Saul Bellow
    978-1-101-90771-9
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Aug 04, 2015
  • The Book of Evidence, The Sea
    The Book of Evidence, The Sea
    Introduction by Adam Phillips
    John Banville
    978-0-375-71272-2
    $25.95 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 21, 2015
  • Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much
    Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much
    Introduction by Ilan Stavans
    Julio Cortazar
    978-0-375-71266-1
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Aug 12, 2014
  • The Transylvanian Trilogy, Volume I
    The Transylvanian Trilogy, Volume I
    They Were Counted; Introduction by Hugh Thomas
    Miklos Banffy
    978-0-375-71229-6
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 02, 2013
  • The Transylvanian Trilogy, Volumes II & III
    The Transylvanian Trilogy, Volumes II & III
    They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided; Introduction by Patrick Thursfield
    Miklos Banffy
    978-0-375-71230-2
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 02, 2013
  • Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
    Flaubert's Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
    Introduction by Sarah Churchwell
    Julian Barnes
    978-0-307-96143-3
    $28.95 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 02, 2012
  • Voss
    Voss
    Introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare
    Patrick White
    978-0-307-96149-5
    $24.95 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 02, 2012
  • The Siege of Krishnapur, Troubles
    The Siege of Krishnapur, Troubles
    Introduction by John Sutherland
    J.G. Farrell
    978-0-307-95784-9
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 06, 2012
  • The Skeptical Romancer
    The Skeptical Romancer
    Selected Travel Writing
    W. Somerset Maugham
    978-0-307-47318-9
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 14, 2012
  • Parade's End
    Parade's End
    Ford Madox Ford
    978-0-307-74420-3
    $21.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 03, 2012
  • His Dark Materials
    His Dark Materials
    The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass; Introduction by Lucy Hughes-Hallett
    Philip Pullman
    978-0-307-95783-2
    $38.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
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  • Doctor Zhivago
    Doctor Zhivago
    Boris Pasternak
    978-0-307-39095-0
    $18.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 04, 2011
  • A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread
    A Room with a View, Where Angels Fear to Tread
    Introduction by Ann Pasternak Slater
    E.M. Forster
    978-0-307-70090-2
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 04, 2011
  • Collected Short Fiction of V. S. Naipaul
    Collected Short Fiction of V. S. Naipaul
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-59402-0
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 12, 2011
  • Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air
    Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming Up for Air
    Introduction by John Carey
    George Orwell
    978-0-307-59504-1
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 05, 2011
  • Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation
    Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation
    Introduction by Michael Dirda
    Isaac Asimov
    978-0-307-59396-2
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Nov 02, 2010
  • The Stories of Ray Bradbury
    The Stories of Ray Bradbury
    Introduction by Christopher Buckley
    Ray Bradbury
    978-0-307-26905-8
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 06, 2010
  • Flashman, Flash for Freedom!, Flashman in the Great Game
    Flashman, Flash for Freedom!, Flashman in the Great Game
    Introduction by Michael Dirda
    George MacDonald Fraser
    978-0-307-59268-2
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Feb 02, 2010
  • The African Trilogy
    The African Trilogy
    Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, and Arrow of God; Introduction by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    Chinua Achebe
    978-0-307-59270-5
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jan 05, 2010
  • This Side of Paradise
    This Side of Paradise
    F. Scott Fitzgerald
    978-0-307-47451-3
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 08, 2009
  • The Best of Frank O'Connor
    The Best of Frank O'Connor
    Introduction by Julian Barnes
    Frank O'Connor
    978-0-307-26904-1
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jun 09, 2009
  • The Bascombe Novels
    The Bascombe Novels
    Written and Introduced by Richard Ford
    Richard Ford
    978-0-307-26903-4
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 14, 2009
  • Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
    Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness
    Introduction by Richard Price
    Richard Yates
    978-0-307-27089-4
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jan 06, 2009
  • David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair
    David Golder, The Ball, Snow in Autumn, The Courilof Affair
    Introduction by Claire Messud
    Irene Nemirovsky
    978-0-307-26708-5
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jan 15, 2008
  • The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien
    The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien
    Introduction by Keith Donohue
    Flann O'Brien
    978-0-307-26749-8
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jan 08, 2008
  • The Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran
    The Collected Works of Kahlil Gibran
    Kahlil Gibran
    978-0-307-26707-8
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 23, 2007
  • Love in the Time of Cholera
    Love in the Time of Cholera
    Gabriel García Márquez
    978-0-307-38973-2
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 05, 2007
  • The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories
    The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, and Selected Stories
    Introduction by James Ellroy
    Dashiell Hammett
    978-0-307-26669-9
    $24.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 04, 2007
  • The Raj Quartet (1)
    The Raj Quartet (1)
    The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion; Introduction by Hilary Spurling
    Paul Scott
    978-0-307-26396-4
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 03, 2007
  • The Raj Quartet (2)
    The Raj Quartet (2)
    The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils; Introduction by Hilary Spurling
    Paul Scott
    978-0-307-26397-1
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 03, 2007
  • The Best of Wodehouse
    The Best of Wodehouse
    An Anthology; Introduction by John Mortimer
    P.G. Wodehouse
    978-0-307-26661-3
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jun 19, 2007
  • Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War
    Three Novels of Ancient Egypt: Khufu's Wisdom, Rhadopis of Nubia, Thebes at War
    Introduction by Nadine Gordimer
    Naguib Mahfouz
    978-0-307-26624-8
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 27, 2007
  • The Handmaid's Tale
    The Handmaid's Tale
    Introduction by Valerie Martin
    Margaret Atwood
    978-0-307-26460-2
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 17, 2006
  • We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
    We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live
    Collected Nonfiction; Introduction by John Leonard
    Joan Didion
    978-0-307-26487-9
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 17, 2006
  • Collected Stories of Roald Dahl
    Collected Stories of Roald Dahl
    Introduction by Jeremy Treglown
    Roald Dahl
    978-0-307-26490-9
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 17, 2006
  • Carried Away
    Carried Away
    A Personal Selection of Stories; Introduction by Margaret Atwood
    Alice Munro
    978-0-307-26486-2
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 26, 2006
  • The Name of the Rose
    The Name of the Rose
    Introduction by David Lodge
    Umberto Eco
    978-0-307-26489-3
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 26, 2006
  • Midnight's Children
    Midnight's Children
    A Novel
    Salman Rushdie
    978-0-8129-7653-3
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Random House Trade Paperbacks
    Apr 04, 2006
  • Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher
    Swami and Friends, The Bachelor of Arts, The Dark Room, The English Teacher
    Introduction by Alexander McCall Smith
    R. K. Narayan
    978-1-4000-4476-4
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 07, 2006
  • Mr. Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma
    Mr. Sampath-The Printer of Malgudi, The Financial Expert, Waiting for the Mahatma
    Introduction by Alexander McCall Smith
    R. K. Narayan
    978-1-4000-4477-1
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 07, 2006
  • Snow
    Snow
    Orhan Pamuk
    978-0-375-70686-8
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 19, 2005
  • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
    The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
    Introduction by Tim Parks
    Giorgio Bassani
    978-1-4000-4422-1
    $23.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 19, 2005
  • Joseph and His Brothers
    Joseph and His Brothers
    Translated and Introduced by John E. Woods
    Thomas Mann
    978-1-4000-4001-8
    $42.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    May 10, 2005
  • The House of the Spirits
    The House of the Spirits
    Introduced by Christopher Hitchens
    Isabel Allende
    978-1-4000-4318-7
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 19, 2005
  • The Woman Warrior, China Men
    The Woman Warrior, China Men
    Introduction by Mary Gordon
    Maxine Hong Kingston
    978-1-4000-4384-2
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 12, 2005
  • The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays
    The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays
    Introduction by David Bellos
    Albert Camus
    978-1-4000-4255-5
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Aug 17, 2004
  • Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham
    Collected Stories of W. Somerset Maugham
    Introduction by Nicholas Shakespeare
    W. Somerset Maugham
    978-1-4000-4253-1
    $28.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 06, 2004
  • Beloved
    Beloved
    Toni Morrison
    978-1-4000-3341-6
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 08, 2004
  • Song of Solomon
    Song of Solomon
    Toni Morrison
    978-1-4000-3342-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 08, 2004
  • The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat, The Only Problem
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, The Girls of Slender Means, The Driver's Seat, The Only Problem
    Introduction by Frank Kermode
    Muriel Spark
    978-1-4000-4206-7
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Apr 06, 2004
  • A Thousand Acres
    A Thousand Acres
    A Novel
    Jane Smiley
    978-1-4000-3383-6
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Anchor
    Dec 02, 2003
  • The General in His Labyrinth
    The General in His Labyrinth
    Gabriel García Márquez
    978-1-4000-3470-3
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 07, 2003
  • Offshore, Human Voices, The Beginning of Spring
    Offshore, Human Voices, The Beginning of Spring
    Introduction by John Bayley
    Penelope Fitzgerald
    978-1-4000-4125-1
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 23, 2003
  • The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower
    The Bookshop, The Gate of Angels, The Blue Flower
    Introduction by Frank Kermode
    Penelope Fitzgerald
    978-1-4000-4126-8
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Sep 23, 2003
  • The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories
    The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, and Selected Stories
    Introduction by Robert Polito
    James M. Cain
    978-0-375-41438-1
    $27.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Jul 22, 2003
  • Atonement
    Atonement
    A Novel
    Ian McEwan
    978-0-385-72179-0
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Anchor
    Feb 25, 2003
  • Zeno's Conscience
    Zeno's Conscience
    A Novel
    Italo Svevo
    978-0-375-72776-4
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 04, 2003
  • Collected Stories of Raymond Chandler
    Collected Stories of Raymond Chandler
    Introduction by John Bayley
    Raymond Chandler
    978-0-375-41500-5
    $35.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window
    The Big Sleep; Farewell, My Lovely; The High Window
    Introduction by Diane Johnson
    Raymond Chandler
    978-0-375-41501-2
    $30.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback
    The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, Playback
    Introduction by Tom Hiney
    Raymond Chandler
    978-0-375-41502-9
    $32.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • Orwell: Essays
    Orwell: Essays
    Introduction by John Carey
    George Orwell
    978-0-375-41503-6
    $42.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 15, 2002
  • My Name Is Red
    My Name Is Red
    Orhan Pamuk
    978-0-375-70685-1
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 27, 2002
  • The Rainbow
    The Rainbow
    D.H. Lawrence
    978-0-375-75965-9
    $12.00 US
    Paperback
    Modern Library
    Feb 12, 2002
  • The Cairo Trilogy
    The Cairo Trilogy
    Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street; Introduction by Sabry Hafez
    Naguib Mahfouz
    978-0-375-41331-5
    $40.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Oct 16, 2001
  • The Complete Henry Bech
    The Complete Henry Bech
    Introduction by Malcolm Bradbury
    John Updike
    978-0-375-41176-2
    $25.00 US
    Hardcover
    Everyman's Library
    Mar 27, 2001
  • Of Human Bondage
    Of Human Bondage
    W. Somerset Maugham
    978-0-375-75315-2
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Modern Library
    Mar 02, 1999
  • The Diary of a Young Girl
    The Diary of a Young Girl
    The Definitive Edition
    Anne Frank
    978-0-553-57712-9
    $7.99 US
    Mass Market Paperback
    Bantam
    Feb 03, 1997

Other Books by this Author

  • The Masque of Africa
    The Masque of Africa
    Glimpses of African Belief
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-45499-7
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 04, 2011
  • India: A Million Mutinies Now
    India: A Million Mutinies Now
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-73973-5
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
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  • A Writer's People
    A Writer's People
    Ways of Looking and Feeling
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    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    May 05, 2009
  • Magic Seeds
    Magic Seeds
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70727-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Nov 08, 2005
  • Literary Occasions
    Literary Occasions
    Essays
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3130-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 10, 2004
  • The Writer and the World
    The Writer and the World
    Essays
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70730-8
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 09, 2003
  • India
    India
    A Wounded Civilization
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3075-0
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 08, 2003
  • The Loss of El Dorado
    The Loss of El Dorado
    A Colonial History
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3076-7
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 08, 2003
  • Half a Life
    Half a Life
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70728-5
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 08, 2002
  • Miguel Street
    Miguel Street
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-71387-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 23, 2002
  • The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book
    The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book
    And Other Comic Inventions
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70833-6
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 09, 2002
  • An Area of Darkness
    An Area of Darkness
    A Discovery of India
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70835-0
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 09, 2002
  • In a Free State
    In a Free State
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3055-2
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 12, 2002
  • The Mystic Masseur
    The Mystic Masseur
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70714-8
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 08, 2002
  • The Middle Passage
    The Middle Passage
    The Caribbean Revisited
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70834-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 08, 2002
  • The Mimic Men
    The Mimic Men
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70717-9
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 14, 2001
  • Between Father and Son
    Between Father and Son
    Family Letters
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70726-1
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 13, 2001
  • Beyond Belief
    Beyond Belief
    Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70648-6
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Dec 07, 1999
  • A Way in the World
    A Way in the World
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-76166-2
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 24, 1995
  • Guerrillas
    Guerrillas
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-73174-0
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 12, 1990
  • A Turn in the South
    A Turn in the South
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-72488-9
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 19, 1990
  • A Bend in the River
    A Bend in the River
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-72202-1
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 13, 1989
  • The Enigma of Arrival
    The Enigma of Arrival
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-394-75760-5
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 12, 1988
  • Among the Believers
    Among the Believers
    An Islamic Journey
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-394-71195-9
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 12, 1982
  • The Masque of Africa
    The Masque of Africa
    Glimpses of African Belief
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-45499-7
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 04, 2011
  • India: A Million Mutinies Now
    India: A Million Mutinies Now
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-307-73973-5
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 22, 2011
  • A Writer's People
    A Writer's People
    Ways of Looking and Feeling
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70729-2
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    May 05, 2009
  • Magic Seeds
    Magic Seeds
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70727-8
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Nov 08, 2005
  • Literary Occasions
    Literary Occasions
    Essays
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3130-6
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 10, 2004
  • The Writer and the World
    The Writer and the World
    Essays
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70730-8
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 09, 2003
  • India
    India
    A Wounded Civilization
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3075-0
    $14.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 08, 2003
  • The Loss of El Dorado
    The Loss of El Dorado
    A Colonial History
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3076-7
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 08, 2003
  • Half a Life
    Half a Life
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70728-5
    $15.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Oct 08, 2002
  • Miguel Street
    Miguel Street
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-71387-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 23, 2002
  • The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book
    The Nightwatchman's Occurrence Book
    And Other Comic Inventions
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70833-6
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 09, 2002
  • An Area of Darkness
    An Area of Darkness
    A Discovery of India
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70835-0
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 09, 2002
  • In a Free State
    In a Free State
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-1-4000-3055-2
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 12, 2002
  • The Mystic Masseur
    The Mystic Masseur
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70714-8
    $15.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 08, 2002
  • The Middle Passage
    The Middle Passage
    The Caribbean Revisited
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70834-3
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jan 08, 2002
  • The Mimic Men
    The Mimic Men
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70717-9
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Aug 14, 2001
  • Between Father and Son
    Between Father and Son
    Family Letters
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70726-1
    $13.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 13, 2001
  • Beyond Belief
    Beyond Belief
    Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-375-70648-6
    $17.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Dec 07, 1999
  • A Way in the World
    A Way in the World
    A Novel
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-76166-2
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jun 24, 1995
  • Guerrillas
    Guerrillas
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-73174-0
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Sep 12, 1990
  • A Turn in the South
    A Turn in the South
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-72488-9
    $16.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Feb 19, 1990
  • A Bend in the River
    A Bend in the River
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-679-72202-1
    $16.95 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Mar 13, 1989
  • The Enigma of Arrival
    The Enigma of Arrival
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-394-75760-5
    $17.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Apr 12, 1988
  • Among the Believers
    Among the Believers
    An Islamic Journey
    V. S. Naipaul
    978-0-394-71195-9
    $18.00 US
    Paperback
    Vintage
    Jul 12, 1982
Related Articles
Humanities & Social Sciences
August 27 2018

Remembering V. S. Naipaul

Mr. Naipaul, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, wrote about the liberation movements that swept across Africa and the Caribbean, where he was born. The New York Times writes: Mr. Naipaul personified a sense of displacement. Having left behind the circumscribed world of Trinidad, he was never entirely rooted in England.

Read more

Remembering V. S. Naipaul

Humanities & Social Sciences
August 27 2018
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