When Mohun Biswas married his wife, Shama, he effectively married her entire family, the daunting, smothering Tulsis. Set in the Hindu community in postcolonial Trinidad—where Naipaul was born—A House for Mr. Biswas is the life story of a man who wanted only a home, but who was a magnet for misfortune, oppression and humiliation, "a wanderer with no place he could call his own, with no family except that which he was to attempt to create out of the engulfing world of the Tulsis." Mohun's survival is a triumph of resilience and persistence and humor, an epic of dignity and self-respect doggedly clung to.—L.G.