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A House for Mr. Biswas
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's summary
A House for Mr. Biswas, by Nobel and Booker Prize-winning author V. S. Naipaul, is a powerful novel about one man's struggle for identity and belonging. Born into poverty, then trapped in the shackles of charity and gratitude, Mr. Biswas longs for a house he can call his own. He loathes his wife and her wealthy family, upon whom he is dependent. Finding himself a mere accessory on their estate, his constant rebellion is motivated by the one thing that can symbolize his independence. The book is striking in its lush and sensual descriptions of Trinidad and was listed as one of Time magazine's 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
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- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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A delightful, well-written, and vastly informative ethnographic study, this is an account of Elizabeth Warnock Fernea's two-year stay in a tiny rural village in Iraq, where she assumed the dress and sheltered life of a harem woman. This volume gives a unique insight into a part of the Midddle Eastern life seldom seen by the West.
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Unforgettable
- By Avalon on 01-05-18
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A Golden Age
- A Novel
- By: Tahmima Anam
- Narrated by: Madhur Jaffrey
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air.
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sad, poignant, thought-provoking, beautiful
- By Rio Delta Wild on 06-04-08
By: Tahmima Anam
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The Vagrants
- By: Yiyun Li
- Narrated by: Jackie Chung
- Length: 11 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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Yiyun Li is the winner of the prestigious Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. The Vagrants, set in 1979 China, is the story of those affected by the execution of a 28-year-old counterrevolutionary. Though suffering, Li's characters nevertheless struggle to maintain hope amid cruel circumstance.
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Lovely prose, good story, deadly narration
- By Athene on 05-10-13
By: Yiyun Li
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A Fatal Inversion
- By: Barbara Vine
- Narrated by: William Gaminara
- Length: 10 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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In the long, hot summer of 1976, a group of young people is camping in Wyvis Hall. Adam, Rufus, Shiva, Vivien and Zosie hardly ask why they are there or how they are to live; they scavenge, steal and sell the family heirlooms. Ten years later, the bodies of a woman and child are discovered in the Hall’s animal cemetery. Which woman? And whose child?
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Oh my!
- By Jill on 06-15-14
By: Barbara Vine
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The Story of Lucy Gault
- By: William Trevor
- Narrated by: Katherine Borowitz
- Length: 8 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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The Story of Lucy Gault traces the repercussions of a child’s attempt to remain in her beloved home.Threatened with a move from Ireland to England, 9-year-old Lucy runs away, setting off a series of misunderstandings that will eventually touch each inhabitant of her village.
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A Most Heart warming read
- By Elizabeth K. Morse on 12-12-11
By: William Trevor
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
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Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
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The Pastures of Heaven
- By: John Steinbeck
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, nearly 40 years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures. We have begun publishing his many works for the first time as Penguin Classics. This season we continue with the seven spectacular and influential books East of Eden, Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Long Valley, The Moon Is Down, The Pastures of Heaven, and Tortilla Flat.
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Golden, mythical America
- By Dan Harlow on 07-07-13
By: John Steinbeck
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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The story of a writer's singular journey - from one place to another, from the British colony of Trinidad to the ancient countryside of England, and from one state of mind to another - is perhaps Naipaul's most autobiographical work. Yet it is also woven through with remarkable invention to make it a rich and complex novel.
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A classic of modern travel writing, An Area of Darkness is Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul’s profound reckoning with his ancestral homeland and an extraordinarily perceptive chronicle of his first encounter with India. Traveling from the bureaucratic morass of Bombay to the ethereal beauty of Kashmir, from a sacred ice cave in the Himalayas to an abandoned temple near Madras, Naipaul encounters a dizzying cross-section of humanity: browbeaten government workers and imperious servants, a suavely self-serving holy man, and a deluded American religious seeker.
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"A stranger could drive through Miguel Street and just say 'Slum!' because he could see no more." But to its residents, this derelict corner of Trinidad's capital is a complete world, where everybody is quite different from everybody else. In this tender, funny early novel, V. S. Naipaul renders their lives (and the legends their neighbors construct around them) with Dickensian verve and Chekhovian compassion.
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Mixed feelings.
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In 1975, at the height of Indira Gandhi’s “Emergency”, V. S. Naipaul returned to India, the country his ancestors had left 100 years earlier. Out of that journey he produced this concise masterpiece: a vibrant, defiantly unsentimental portrait of a society traumatized by centuries of foreign conquest and immured in a mythic vision of its past.
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Insightful & informative!
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AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ
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Too Good For Audio
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On a road trip through Africa, two English people - Bobby, a civil servant with a guilty appetite for African boys; and Linda, a supercilious "compound wife" - are driving back to their enclave after a stay in the capital. But in between lies the landscape of an unnamed country whose squalor and ethnic bloodletting suggest Idi Amin's Uganda. And the farther Naipaul's protagonists travel into it, the more they find themselves crossing the line that separates privileged outsiders from horrified victims.
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Magical Prose …
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In this piercing story of innocence betrayed set in the 30s, the orphaned Portia is stranded in the sophisticated and politely treacherous world of her wealthy half-brother's home in London. There she encounters the attractive, carefree cad Eddie. To him, Portia is at once child and woman, and her fears her gushing love. To her, Eddie is the only reason to be alive. But when Eddie follows Portia to a sea-side resort, the flash of a cigarette lighter in a darkened cinema illuminates a stunning romantic betrayal.
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The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portuguese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray.
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An American Tragedy
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This story follows a true crime murder case from New York in 1906. Clyde Griffiths is the impoverished young man from a family of street preachers who dreams of bettering his station in life. However, his dream ends in murder and he is subsequently arrested and put on trial—putting the media in a frenzy.
By: Theodore Dreiser
What listeners say about A House for Mr. Biswas
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Liz W.
- 12-11-17
Thoughtful story, WONDERFULLY narrated
This is a long, funny, sad, sometimes frustrating story about a man who dreams of something better. It's not an easy listen, but well worth the time invested in the end. As always, Sam Dastor brings the story to life with his narration. I could honestly listen to this guy read the phone book. He interprets the author's words beautifully.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Arch in Phx
- 02-09-23
Great Performance. Great Story.
Many different accents, Helps the color of the many characters. Nice flow, welcomes story into your mind and heart. Loved.
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- Eric Wolf
- 02-19-21
Didn't Finish
This might be a bit too cerebral for me. I confess I found thus widely praised classic boring.
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- David C.
- 09-27-22
21.5 Hours and 623 Pages of Compelling Frustration
21.5 Hours and 623 Pages of Compelling Frustration
#ahouseformrbiswas is a beautifully written novel by #vsnaipaul that wonderfully captures the Indian immigrant experience of #brahmin class in much of the Caribbean. It is also extremely frustrating as, per the depiction of #naipaul the vast and extremely insular Indian families are exceedingly aggravating, bullying and humiliating of one another in ways I find intolerable. Reading around the story, I believe that was the case with the author as well.
Main character #mohunbiswas (modeled after the author's father) was born of a poor immigrant Indian family in #trinidad where they had been brought as laborers after the abolition of slavery. Living in abject poverty despite the Brahmin status, Mohun was considered unlucky by an Indian holy man because he was born with six fingers on one hand. While educated at the missionary school he had limited prospects but circumstances found him marrying into a huge, well connected and prosperous family that did little for his personal advancement as his poverty forced him to live with his wife and raise his children on the various properties of his in-laws. With only two sons and 14 daughters, the male children were sheltered and spoiled while the daughters, their husband and seemingly countless children and grandchildren live a communal life with the family ran by the widowed Mrs. Tulsi and her brother in law who serves as the estate overseer. His power and bullying influence is unquestioned and modeled as family members align to aggravate and humiliate each other as a means of establishing oneself in the familial pecking order.
As the title suggests, the 25 year or so story arc shows Mohun desperately trying to carve out a future for himself and his family and escape the grip of the Tulsi family. It also documents a little know aspect of Trinidad history in the years before and after #worldwarii as the Caribbean island nation undergoes its own economic and political evolution, being a seemingly forgotten #british planter colony of a few whites and many #black and Indian laborers attempting to elevate their status as, first laboring subjects of the #unitedkingdom and then contractors for the #unitedstates military which occupied the strategically located Caribbean island during and after the War. Like Mr. Biswas's son, V.S. Naipul used his education and brilliant mind to achieve higher education at #cambridge and became on the the millions of foreign British subjects to find opportunity and a new life in Great Britain.
Though this novel was released in 1961, it is part of the body of work that netted him the #bookerprize in 1971, the #nobelprizeforliterature in 2001 and the #72 position on the #modernlibrarytop100novels which is why I ended up coming across his work at this time. Interestingly, he also occupies the #82 position as well with #abendintheriver which I will be getting to soon enough. I enjoyed this novel via #audible and narrator #samdastor did an excellent job telling the story. I appreciate that, as well as reading another #nobellaureate , I have likewise checked off one more from my global reading challenge with #trinidadandtobago . It was long and frustrating, but it was a beautifully written story well told. #readtheworldchallenge #readtheworld #globalreadingchallenge #trinidadandtobagoliterature
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- Moving Target
- 11-14-23
So much good prose
This novel came to interest me when I first heard it mentioned on the QI television program in Britain. I had never read a novel about Indian people before, nor did I know much about their lives in Trinidad. I found it very illuminating with regard to Indian culture and changing times.
The overwhelming sadness of this book made it rather a chore to complete. most of the characters seem unsympathetic, or at worst hard to approach. now I feel I must study up on what other readers have gleaned from this novel, as I don't feel I've taken much away with me.
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- Saman
- 12-11-17
Charming prose. Lovely book.
Naipaul never dissapoints in his narrative. This is a very simple story of a man who lives a fairly, short life on the fringes of poverty and amidst a patriarchal household. Many readers can be put-off by the pure absurdness of this story-line but for me as a Naipaul advocate, this is pure magic.
The protagonist, Mohun Biswas, is a dreadful character who continuously bites the hand that feeds him and wishes for grander things in life. His wishes to escape the chains of the Tulsi clan and buy a house of his own are the center pieces of the story. The novel spans the years of his life: his unhappy and tragic childhood, marriage to Sharma and the expectations of the Tulsis, children, and the continuous machinations of the sister-in-laws and brother-in-laws. Getting beaten and giving a beating is expected in the Tulsi house.
I wanted so badly for Mr. Biswas to succeed and yet, at some junctures, I wanted him to fail. That is the beauty of the story and the book. Remember the first chapter and then you will understand the rest of Mr. Biswas’s life and trials. Loved this book and the narration was pretty good too.
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17 people found this helpful
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- Tona
- 01-25-18
Humble yet powerful...
This thoughtfully written story of of man's journey to find his place is a reflection of every man struggle. Beautifully constructed, eloquent and playful, it speaks to anyone, regardless of station, nationality, or era, trying to find their place in this world.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Victoria C.
- 07-09-23
Classic
Beautifully written story of a man and his family’s sometimes funny, often heartbreaking life in Trinidad.
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- barbara
- 10-11-18
One of the best audiobooks ever
This was my first Naipaul book, one which had come recommended, and I was not disappointed. The immersion into the world of Mr. Biswas (who was, I read, a facsimile of Naipaul's father) amounted to 21 hours of bliss for this reader. The details of his life were delivered with wry humor, wit, and a nuanced pathos that left me with compassion, amusement, awe at Naipaul's mastery, and a strong desire to travel to Trinidad. The descriptions of the landscape were rendered with such perfection, I could taste and smell the vegetation and salt spray. The characters were plentiful, full of life, and both vexing and pleasing in their insistence on being real. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I felt that the narrator was superb, and rendered the accents perfectly, and further, that he enhanced the experience of this book, by adding subtle expressive substance to the wonderful dialogue.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Anthony W.
- 09-28-22
Great Performance and Story
This was a very fun read. Engaging most of the way through and meaningful. The performer did a wonderful job. I only felt that the book kind of sizzles out towards the end and became less enjoyable than the rest of the book. Nonetheless, it did not mar the experience which I thoroughly enjoyed.
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