Naipaul wrote the book based on his own experiences as a child. Writing for The New York Review of Books in 1983, he stated that, "Of all my books A House for Mr. Biswas is the one closest to me." The book took him three years to write.[7]
Naipaul finished the final proofreading of the book in May 1961.[7] The book was first published in London by André Deutsch in 1961. McGraw Hill published the first US edition of the book in New York in the same year.[8]