This volume revisits V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr Biswas about 50 years after its first publication in the year 1961, and critiques what constitutes its abiding appeal. Fourteen leading scholars from across the globe posit seminal critical responses to this now nearly an iconic novel, noticing the deep focus it wields with consummate artistry on the seemingly trivial but arresting aspirations of a third-world journalist. They also revaluate issues and concerns such as the autobiographical mode of writing, the play of metaphor or metonymy, and the role of the theories of creolization vis-à-vis this text. Each of the essays looks at the novel closely and each from an inimitably distinctive point of view. Together they make for an invaluable collection of fresh insights into Biswasdom and Naipaulia.


Meenakshi Bharat teaches in the University of Delhi. She is a writer, translator, reviewer and critic. Her special interests include children’s literature, women’s fiction and English studies — areas which she has extensively researched. She was responsible for the India section in The Cambridge Book of Children’s Literature. Apart from the various articles and reviews, her published books are:The Ultimate Colony (2003), Desert in Bloom: Indian Women Writers of Fiction in English (2004), Filming the Line of Control (2008), Rushdie the Novelist (2009),an edition of George Eliot’s The Mill on the Flosstwo volumes of Indo-Australian short fiction entitledFear Factor: Terror Incognito,ed from Picador (India 2009, Australia, 2010) and Alien Shores, from Brass Monkey (Australia, 2012). A children’s book, Little Elephant throws a Party is in the press.