the formal term for the attempt to reconcile the suffering and meaninglessness of life with the notion of a providential, benign and powerful deity. Theodicy is a project at times ingenious, bleak, necessary, magnificent and platitudinous.

in order to deliver this baleful, Kierkegaardian news

the vertiginous sensation of possessing Jesus's power

This is religious time, and is belied by the novel itself, which tells us in its every comic, secular scene that Mr Biswas's life cannot be comprehended in one glance. The novel asks us to rise up against its own determinism

his more stolid brother

frondy purple tassels

suffering from a surfeit of bloody pungency

looking is always mediated by other representations of looking

heaven must perforce be a place of serious noticing

the mind putting 'understanding' into abeyance