A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul [0]
A House for Mr. Biswas
V. S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He went to England on a scholarship in 1950. After four years at Oxford he began to write, and since then he has followed no other profession. He is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction and the recipient of numerous honors, including the Booker Prize in 1971 and a knighthood for services to literature in 1990. He lives in Wiltshire, England.
Also by V. S. Naipaul
NONFICTION
Between Father and Son: Family Letters
Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions Among the Converted Peoples
India: A Million Mutinies Now
A Turn in the South
Finding the Center
Among the Believers
The Return of Eva Perón (with The Killings in Trinidad)
India: A Wounded Civilization
The Overcrowded Barracoon
The Loss of El Dorado
An Area of Darkness
The Middle Passage
FICTION
A Way in the World
The Enigma of Arrival
A Bend in the River
Guerrillas
In a Free State
A Flag on the Island
The Mimic Men
Mr. Stone and the Knights Companion
Miguel Street*
The Suffrage of Elvira*
The Mystic Masseur*
*Published in an omnibus edition entitled Three Novels
FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MARCH 2001
Copyright © 1961, 1969, copyright renewed 1989 by V.S. Naipaul
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1961.
Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage International and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Naipaul, V. S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad), 1932–
A house for Mr. Biswas / V. S. Naipaul—1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
1. East Indians—Trinidad and Tobago—Fiction.
2. Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago)—Fiction.
3. Middle aged men—Fiction. 4. Home ownership—Fiction.
5. Homeowners—Fiction.
I. Title: House for Mister Biswas. II. Title.
PR9272.9.N32 H6 2001
823′.914—dc21 00-049056
eISBN: 978-0-307-77655-6
www.vintagebooks.com
v3.1
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
PART ONE
1. Pastoral
2. Before the Tulsis
3. The Tulsis
4. The Chase
5. Green Vale
6. A Departure
PART TWO
1. ‘Amazing Scenes’
2. The New Régime
3. The Shorthills Adventure
4. Among the Readers and Learners
5. The Void
6. The Revolution
7. The House
Epilogue
Prologue
TEN WEEKS before he died, Mr Mohun Biswas, a journalist of Sikkim Street, St James, Port of Spain, was sacked. He had been ill for some time. In less than a year he had spent more than nine weeks at the Colonial Hospital and convalesced at home for even longer. When the doctor advised him to take a complete rest the Trinidad Sentinel had no choice. It gave Mr Biswas three months’ notice and continued, up to the time of his death, to supply him every morning with a free copy of the paper.
Mr Biswas was forty-six, and had four children. He had no money. His wife Shama had no money. On the house in Sikkim Street Mr Biswas owed, and had been owing for four years, three thousand dollars. The interest on this, at eight per cent, came to twenty dollars a month; the ground rent was ten dollars. Two children were at school. The two older children, on whom Mr Biswas might have depended, were both abroad on scholarships.
It gave Mr Biswas some satisfaction that in the circumstances Shama did not run straight off to her mother to beg for help. Ten years before that would have been her first thought. Now she tried to comfort Mr Biswas, and devised plans on her own.
‘Potatoes,’ she said. ‘We can start selling potatoes. The price around here is eight cents a pound. If we buy at five and sell at seven –’
‘Trust the Tulsi bad blood,’ Mr Biswas said. ‘I know that the pack of you Tulsis are financial geniuses. But have a good look around and count the number of