SUMMARY
A House for Mr Biswas, a novel by Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul, is regarded as his most significant achievement. The novel traces Mohun Biswas’seffort to define his postcolonial, hybrid identity and to establish himself in animitative, peripheral postcolonial society. Such half-made society has been presented through the experience of displacement and blurring of the borders between private and public space. Mr Biswas’s symbolic quest for meaningfulindependence and his ndeavor to claim his portion of the earth contain pathosand humor. On a larger scale, the novel reflects Trinidadian Indian social history and the transition of Trinidad from a colonial to an independent status.Naipaul, however, elevates the issue even further, to the category of the universal, that is, to the eternal identity dilemma and man’s struggle for survival and sense of belonging.