THE HOUSE AND THE WORLD IN V. S. NAIPAUL`S A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS

Abstract

A House for Mr Biswas, a novel by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, is regarded as his most significant achievement. The novel traces Mohun Biswas’s effort to define his postcolonial, hybrid identity and to establish himself in an imitative, peripheral postcolonial society. Such half-made society has been presented through the experience of displacement and blurring of the borders between private and public space. Mr Biswas’s symbolic quest for meaningful independence and his ndeavor to claim his portion of the earth contain pathos and humor. On a larger scale, the novel reflects Trinidadian Indian social history and the transition of Trinidad from a colonial to an independent status. Naipaul, however, elevates the issue even further, to the category of the universal, that is, to the eternal identity dilemma and man’s struggle for survival and sense of belonging.