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“Attributed the decay of Hindu society in Trinidad to the rise of the timorous, weak, non-beating class of husband.” (A House for Mr. Biswas Quotes)
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“Change had come over him without his knowing. There had been no precise point at which the city had lost its romance and promise, no point at which he had begun to consider himself old, his career closed, and his visions of the future became only visions of Anand’s future. Each realization had been delayed and had come, not as a surprise, but as a statement of a condition long accepted.”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“He read political books. They gave him phrases which he could only speak to himself and use on Shama. They also revealed one region after another of misery and injustice and left him feeling more helpless and more isolated than ever. Then it was that he discovered the solace of Dickens. Without difficulty he transferred characters and settings to people and places he knew. In the grotesques of Dickens everything he feared and suffered from was ridiculed and diminished, so that his own anger, his own contempt became unnecessary, and he was given strength to bear the most difficult part of his day: dressing in the morning, that daily affirmation of faith in oneself, which at times for him was almost like an act of sacrifice.”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“How ridiculous were the attentions the weak paid one another in the shadow of the strong!”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it; to have died among the Tulsis, amid the squalor of that large, disintegrating and indifferent family; to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; or worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“On the front cover of Newsweek reviews “A House for Mr. Biswas” as “a marvelous prose epic that matches the best 19th century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power.”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“Some lesser husbands built a latrine on the hillside.”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
“Though no one recognized his strength, Anand was among the strong. His satirical sense kept him aloof. At first this was only a pose, and imitation of his father. But satire led to contempt, and at Shorthills contempt, quick, deep, inclusive, became part of his nature. It led to inadequacies, to self-awareness and a lasting loneliness. But it made him unassailable.”
V. S. Naipaul
A House for Mr. Biswas
