Content Warning: The source material features depictions of domestic abuse, assault, and violence towards children and animals.

In a short prologue, Mr. Biswas is at the end of his life. His recent ill health has meant that he has lost his job as the Trinidad Sentinel, the newspaper where he worked until very recently. At this time, his son Anand and his daughter Savi are studying abroad while his two youngest daughters, Myna and Kamla, are still at school in Trinidad. In his old age, Mr. Biswas purchased the house in which he now lives and in which he will soon die at the age of 46. The house has a long and turbulent history, but it is most importantly, "his own portion of earth" (7). Mr. Biswas is an inexperienced homeowner, and he has accumulated a great deal of debt to purchase the house, even though it is not well built. His wife Shama has long disapproved of the house. Despite this, he is satisfied that he no longer must live with the "large, disintegrating and indifferent" (11) Tulsi family, his in-laws.