fortune. He encounters a friend from his school days who helps him get into the business of sign-writing. While on the job, Mr Biswas attempts to romance a client's daughter but his advances are misinterpreted as a wedding proposal. He is drawn into a marriage which he does not have the nerve to stop and becomes a member of the Tulsi household. Mr Biswas becomes very unhappy with his wife Shama (based on Droapatie Naipaul) and her overbearing family. The Tulsis (based on the Capildeo family), and the big decaying Hanuman House (based on Anand Bhavan aka the Lion House) where they live represent the communal way of life which is traditional throughout Asia. Mr Biswas is offered a place in this cosmos, a subordinate place to be sure, but a place that is guaranteed and from which advancement is possible. But Mr Biswas wants more than being just a gharjamai. He is, by instinct, a modern man. He wants to be the author of his own life. That is an aspiration with which the Tulsis cannot deal, and their decaying world conspires to drag him down. Despite his poor education, Mr Biswas becomes a journalist, has four children with Shama, and attempts several times to build a house that he can call his own, a house which will symbolise his independence. Mr Biswas' desperate struggle to acquire a house of his own can be linked to an individual's need to develop an authentic identity. He feels that only by having his own house he can overcome his feelings of rootlessness and alienation. Characters Mohun Biswas (based on V. S. Naipaul's father, Seepersad Naipaul) Shama (based on Droapatie Naipaul), Mohun's wife Raghu, Mohun's father Tara, Mohun's mother's sister Bhandat, Tara's brother-in-law Pundit Jayaram, Mohun's cruel employer, with whom he worked as an assistant Mrs. Tulsi, Shama's mother Anand, Mohun's son (based on V. S. Naipaul). Anand excels in school and shows signs of talent as a writer. Development and publication Naipaul wrote the book based on his own experiences as a child. Writing for The New York Review of Books in 1983, he stated that, "Of all my books A House for Mr. Biswas is the one closest to me." The book took him three years to write. Naipaul finished the final proofreading of the book in May 1961. The book was first published in London by André Deutsch in