{"product_id":"a-house-for-mr-biswas-2","title":"A House for Mr Biswas","description":"Product Description      \u003cbr\u003eThe book that first brought Naipaul worldwide acclaim, this richly comic novel tells the moving story of a man without a single asset who enters a life devoid of opportunity, and whose tumble-down house becomes a potent symbol of the search for identity in a postcolonial world.\u003cbr\u003e      Review      \u003cbr\u003e\"Naipaul has constructed a marvelous prose epic that matches the best nineteenth-century novels for richness of comic insight and final, tragic power.\"–\u003cbr\u003eNewsweek\u003cbr\u003e      Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.      \u003cbr\u003eI. Pastoral\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortly before he was born there had been another quarrel between Mr Biswas's mother Bipti and his father Raghu, and Bipti had taken her three children and walked all the way in the hot sun to the village where her mother Bissoondaye lived. There Bipti had cried and told the old story of Raghu's miserliness: how he kept a check on every cent he gave her, counted every biscuit in the tin, and how he would walk ten miles rather than pay a cart a penny.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBipti's father, futile with asthma, propped himself up on his string bed and said, as he always did on unhappy occasions, 'Fate. There is nothing we can do about it.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo one paid him any attention. Fate had brought him from India to the sugar-estate, aged him quickly and left him to die in a crumbling mud hut in the swamplands; yet he spoke of Fate often and affectionately, as though, merely by surviving, he had been particularly favoured.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhile the old man talked on, Bissoondaye sent for the midwife, made a meal for Bipti's children and prepared beds for them. When the midwife came the children were asleep. Some time later they were awakened by the screams of Mr Biswas and the shrieks of the midwife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'What is it?' the old man asked. 'Boy or girl?'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Boy, boy,' the midwife cried. 'But what sort of boy? Six-fingered, and born in the wrong way.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe old man groaned and Bissoondaye said, 'I knew it. There is no luck for me.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt once, though it was night and the way was lonely, she left the hut and walked to the next village, where there was a hedge of cactus. She brought back leaves of cactus, cut them into strips and hung a strip over every door, every window, every aperture through which an evil spirit might enter the hut.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the midwife said, 'Whatever you do, this boy will eat up his own mother and father.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next morning, when in the bright light it seemed that all evil spirits had surely left the earth, the pundit came, a small, thin man with a sharp satirical face and a dismissing manner. Bissoondaye seated him on the string bed, from which the old man had been turned out, and told him what had happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Hm. Born in the wrong way. At midnight, you said.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBissoondaye had no means of telling the time, but both she and the midwife had assumed that it was midnight, the inauspicious hour.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAbruptly, as Bissoondaye sat before him with bowed and covered head, the pundit brightened, 'Oh, well. It doesn't matter. There are always ways and means of getting over these unhappy things.' He undid his red bundle and took out his astrological almanac, a sheaf of loose thick leaves, long and narrow, between boards. The leaves were brown with age and their musty smell was mixed with that of the red and ochre sandalwood paste that had been spattered on them. The pundit lifted a leaf, read a little, wet his forefinger on his tongue and lifted another leaf.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt last he said, 'First of all, the features of this unfortunate boy. He will have good teeth but they will be rather wide, and there will be spaces between them. I suppose you know what that means. The boy will be a lecher and a spendthrift. Possibly a liar as well. It is hard to be sure about those gaps between the teeth. They might mean only one of those things or they might mean all three.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'What about the six fingers, pundit?'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'That's a shocking sign, of course. The only thing I can advise is to keep him away from trees and water. Particularly water.'\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Never bath h","brand":"Picador Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47498427629793,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0779\/9033\/0593\/files\/7069133482703.jpg?v=1763726047","url":"https:\/\/perfectbookhouse.com\/products\/a-house-for-mr-biswas-2","provider":"PERFECT BOOK HOUSE","version":"1.0","type":"link"}