Una Casa Per Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

An Indo-Trinidadian man born into poverty struggles against familial domination and social constraints to carve out an independent life, taking odd jobs and enduring humiliations while fixating on owning a house as proof of dignity and selfhood; his long, often comic and tragic quest to build a home becomes a measure of identity, resistance to fate, and the costs of survival in a shifting colonial society.