In the comic masterpiece which established him one of the greatest writers in the English language, Naipaul follows the fortunes of Mr Biswas, the outsider who refuses to conform to the customs of his grander in-laws whose house he lives in. Finally finding a house of his own, he triumphs over the smaller minds who would repress him.

V.S. Naipaul was born in Trinidad in 1932. He is the author of thirteen works of fiction, including A Bend in the River, The Mystic Masseur and The Enigma of Arrival, and ten books of non-fiction including An Area of Darkness and Among the Believers. He has won the Booker Prize, the John Lleweiyn Rhys Memorial Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the WH Smith award and in 1993 was awarded the first David Cohen British Literature Award. His latest novel, Half A Life, was published in September 2001. Shortly afterwards he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Wiltshire.