From the Nobel Prize-winning author: an unforgettable comedy of manners inspired by the author s father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century s finest novels. A marvelous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final tragic power. --Newsweek 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 yet comedic novel A House for Mr. Biswas masterfully evokes a man s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas.