V. S. Naipaul

Born the "wrong way" and thrust into a world that greeted him with little more than a bad omen, Mr. Mohun Biswas has spent his forty-six years of life striving for independence. But his determined efforts have met only with calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. When he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on...