Human Conditions: ‘A House for Mr Biswas' by V.S. Naipaul

In 'A House for Mr Biswas', his 1961 comic masterpiece, V.S. Naipaul pays tribute to his father and the vanishing world of his Trinidadian youth. Pankaj Mishra joins Adam Shatz in their first of four episodes to discuss the novel, a pathbreaking work of postcolonial literature and a particularly powerful influence on Pankaj himself. They explore Naipaul’s fraught relationship to modernity, and the tensions between his attachment to individual freedom and his insistence on the constraints imposed by history.
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Pankaj Mishra is a writer, critic and reporter who regularly contributes to the LRB. His books include Age of Anger: A History of the Present, From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia and two novels, most recently Run and Hide.
Read more in the LRB:
D.A.N. Jones: The Enchantment of Vidia Naipaul
www.lrb.co.uk/...
Frank Kermode: What Naipaul Knows
www.lrb.co.uk/...
Paul Theroux: Out of Sir Vidia’s Shadow
www.lrb.co.uk/...
Sanjay Subramahnyam: Where does he come from?
www.lrb.co.uk/...
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Close Readings is a multi-series podcast subscription from the London Review of Books exploring different periods of literature through a selection of key works. Enjoy an introductory grounding like no other from Europe's leading literary journal: fluent, rigorous, irreverent and never boring.
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Running in 2024:
ON SATIRE with Colin Burrow and Clare Bucknell
HUMAN CONDITIONS with Adam Shatz, Judith Butler, Pankaj Mishra and Brent Hayes Edwards
AMONG THE ANCIENTS II with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
Plus two bonus series:
MEDIEVAL LOLS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
POLITICAL POEMS with Seamus Perry and Mark Ford
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AMONG THE ANCIENTS I with Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones
MEDIEVAL BEGINNINGS with Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley
THE LONG AND SHORT with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
MODERN-ISH POETS: SERIES 1 with Mark Ford and Seamus Perry
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[@richarddelanet]

_Trinidad Village_ by H & F Herskovits, 1947. _Behold the West Indies_ Amy Oakley, 1941. _A Brighter Sun_ by Samuel Selvon, 1952 (a novel set in 1940).

[@betruthfulalwayspeace579]

This was very interesting. Loved this.

[@pieterhilvering]

Very good talk