Just last week I finished reading A House for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul. The book is partially inspired by Naipaul's father's experience growing up in Trinidad, and as such is all the more interesting and engaging.
I've read Guerrillas and A Bend in the River, by Naipaul, and though I liked and would very much recommend them both, I found Mohun Biswas to be the most compelling of the main characters in these books. Obviously Biswas is incredibly flawed, as a mysoginistic, ego-driven product of his culture and time. But there is so much longing in the book, for a better job, family, environment, and set of circumstances, and you feel it so clearly and thoroughly that you want Biswas to somehow rise above everything holding him down and find the fulfillment and calm that he, and and each of us, is so desperately searching for.
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