V. S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas: A Painful Quest for Identity

Abstract

V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas has justly been recognized as one of the best novels in contemporary English fiction. It was written by Naipaul was at the age of twenty-nine. It deals presents the problems and plights of the people’s identities. It is conceived and executed in the great tradition of the humanist novel, and has subtle and comprehensive analysis of the colonial experience as anything in imaginative literature. It is the character of Mohun Biswas against his background that imparts the striking success to the novel. Discloses the multifaceted and perceptive story of Mr. Biswas of the community he belongs to. It has the direct comportment on the important as well as the modern aspects and problematic issues that associates to identity crisis in human beings. William Walsh says, “the “Crisis” originates from the excruciating historical experience of slavery of various kinds. The novel explores the consciousness of the people who constitute a destitute culture and “carry about them the mark, in their attitudes and sensibilities and convictions, of the slave, the unnecessary man” (A Manifold Voice: Studies in Common wealth Literature, 70-71).