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A Bend in the River

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'Brilliant and terrifying' - "Observer". I had to be the man who was doing well and more than well, the man whose drab shop concealed some bigger operation that made millions. I had to be the man who had planned it all, who had come to the destroyed town at the bend in the river because he had foreseen the rich future. 'Salim, the narrator, is a young man from an Indian family of traders long resident on the coast of Central Africa. Salim has left the coast to make his way in the interior, there to take on a small trading shop of this and that, sundries, sold to the natives. The place is 'a bend in the river'; it is Africa. The time is post-colonial, the time of Independence. The Europeans have withdrawn or been forced to withdraw and the scene is one of chaos, violent change, warring tribes, ignorance, isolation, poverty and a lack of preparation for the modern world they have entered, or partially assumed as a sort of decoration. It is a story of historical upheaval and social breakdown. Naipaul has fashioned a work of intense imaginative force. It is a haunting creation, rich with incident and human bafflement, played out in an immense detail of landscape rendered with a poignant brilliance' - Elizabeth Hardwick. 'Always a master of fictional landscape, Naipaul here shows, in his variety of human examples and in his search for underlying social causes, a Tolstoyan spirit' - John Updike.

336 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 1979

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About the author

V.S. Naipaul

189 books1,753 followers
V. S. Naipaul was a British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent known for his sharp, often controversial explorations of postcolonial societies, identity, and displacement. His works, which include both fiction and nonfiction, often depict themes of exile, cultural alienation, and the lingering effects of colonialism.
He gained early recognition with A House for Mr Biswas, a novel inspired by his father’s struggles in Trinidad. His later works, such as The Mimic Men, In a Free State, and A Bend in the River, cemented his reputation as a masterful and incisive writer. Beyond fiction, his travelogues and essays, including Among the Believers and India: A Million Mutinies Now, reflected his critical perspective on societies in transition.
Naipaul received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Nobel Prize in Literature, awarded for his ability to blend deep observation with literary artistry. While praised for his prose, his often unsparing portrayals of postcolonial nations and controversial statements sparked both admiration and criticism.

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Profile Image for Jim Fonseca.
1,143 reviews8,269 followers
June 13, 2021
This book is as much a story of what it was like living in a newly independent country in Africa in the 1960’s - 1970’s as it is a novel. The book has memorable opening lines: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”

The main character is a Muslim from a well-off family, originally from India by way of eastern Africa but now settled on the west coast. He buys a store from his uncle and moves a week’s journey upriver and inland, toward the east. The family has slaves that they are ‘responsible for’ so when he moves inland he has to take a young man, a slave, with him, even though he’d rather leave him behind. His store sells household goods to the locals as well as to those who arrived by the big weekly riverboat and by dugout canoes from the interior.

A lot of the town, located at a bend in the river, is burned and in ruins but he and his uncle are confident it will come back. Those who are left in town are like a mini-United Nations: most of the businesses are owned by Arabs, Indians, Belgians, Greeks and Portuguese. But it’s not a melting pot. A major theme is that everyone is of ‘two worlds.” Like the main character being of Indian and African ancestry. And the Africans from the bush are halfway between the bush world and that of the town.

The town starts to thrive again and even gets an international burger chain restaurant. The main character befriends a young man whose mother is a trader by dugout. She wants her son to stay in town to get an education. Much of the story concerns his relationship with these two young men who work in his store.

The country is run by an African leader. The bizarre behaviors of the African leader provide some humor and horror. The President’s PR person lives in the town with his wife (they are British) but he appears to have fallen from favor with the President. (Eventually the main character has an affair with the man’s wife.) The President uses white Belgian mercenaries to do some of his dirty work. When he decides he wants a change of leadership in the local military garrison, the Belgians come to town and go into the garrison and kill the African commanders.

The President creates a type of prep school in the town, to which the African boy from the bush is admitted. But eventually the President loses interest in it and the school falls into disrepair. The President hires a white man to travel with him through the country and always be the first off the boat or train to run out into the crowd and ‘draw off the evil.’ The President makes his mother a universal symbol of womanhood and turns her into a cult figure in a process like a form of Mariolatry.

Eventually the main character’s business is ‘nationalized.’ He is still employed as the manager but the firm is now run by an African appointed by the President. He knows it’s time to get out so he starts smuggling gold and elephant tusks on the side and stashing his money in an international bank so he can get out on a moment’s notice – which in the end, he barely does.

There is good writing and big thoughts:

“The Europeans wanted gold and slaves like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves….they got both the slaves and the statues.”

Of the Africans living in the forests: “I knew other things about the forest kingdom, though. I knew that the slave people were in revolt and were being butchered back into submission. But Africa was big. The bush muffled the sound of murder, and the muddy rivers and lakes washed the blood away.”

“It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There is no right.”

There are stereotypes of Africans such as of a young man who is employed in a restaurant. “Yet as soon as he was left alone he became a different person. He went vacant. Not rude, just vacant. It made you feel that while they did their jobs in various glossy settings, they were only acting for the people who employed them…the job itself was meaningless to them…”

description

All in all I found it fascinating. A good read that kept my attention all the way through while I learned a lot. I’m adding it to my favorites.

Photo of the author (1932-2018) from bbc.com
Profile Image for Sasha.
Author 9 books4,933 followers
June 18, 2019
Say there's a bad guy. He's in a book; the book is well-written; fine, there are many books about bad guys. Say further that the book is written by a bad guy. Fine; lots of authors are dicks. Now say that the author is unaware that they're both bad guys. He hasn't written the book he thinks he's written. Now where are you?

A Bend in the River's Salim is a bad guy. He's a bully and a coward. He doesn't know that he's a bully and a coward, and VS Naipaul doesn't seem to know either. In one part, he savagely beats his mistress. "The back of my hand, from little finger to wrist, was aching; bone had struck bone." She seems okay with it. She calls him later. "Do you want me to come back? The road is quite empty. I can be back in twenty minutes. Oh, Salim. I look dreadful. My face is in an awful state. I will have to hide for days."

The passage confused me because, from what I know about people, they don't like being beaten without a safeword. It confused me so much that I wanted to learn more about Naipaul. I had to know what was going through his head when he wrote this passage. I don't do this normally; I think books should be taken on their own terms. But this doesn't ring true for me. It disturbs me. What happened here?

What I found was a quote from Naipaul about his own mistress, Margaret Murray: 'I was very violent with her for two days with my hand; my hand began to hurt...she didn't mind it at all. She thought of it in terms of my passion for her. Her face was bad. She couldn't really appear in public." So this is where the passage comes from. It's a direct quote from his life; Salim and Naipaul are the same. So this is the truth, right? In its own way?

But whose truth? "She didn't mind it at all," Salim and Naipaul both say, and that still doesn't seem right. It's the truth to Naipaul; is it the truth to Margaret Murray? So I kept looking, and I found a letter from her, in response to the above quote. She says, drily: "Vidia [Naipaul] says I didn’t mind the abuse. I certainly did mind."

So Naipaul is not telling the truth; he doesn't have the truth; he doesn't see the truth. He's the villain in his own story and he's incapable of realizing that he's written the villain in this one.

And why would we read a book by someone who doesn't recognize truth? It's well-written. It's a well-written book by someone who is incorrect about who he is, what the world is. He's telling two stories: one about Africa, one about people. He doesn't know about Africa; he's only visited. He's certainly a racist. He doesn't know about people, either. The situation is imaginary; he made it up to illustrate his twisted, cynical, violent view of the world.

The thing is that this is a good book. The plot is thin, and didn't engage me as much as I'd hope, but the ideas are powerful and disturbing. The writing is something like brilliant. It taught me something about a certain kind of person: the bad kind. To get into the head of someone as corrupt and as devoid of self-awareness as VS Naipaul is, that's interesting and even valuable. He has told the truth; he just doesn't know the truth he's told. Know your enemy, right? Here is the enemy.
Profile Image for Orsodimondo.
2,404 reviews2,375 followers
May 14, 2021
FIUME DI TENEBRA


L’ansa del fiume.

Il mio primo incontro con Naipaul che aveva appena vinto il premio Nobel. Sono seguite un altro paio di letture, ma non mi sono piaciute tanto quanto questa.

Mi ha colpito subito l’ambientazione, che Naipaul non definisce mai, come se la volesse tenere nascosta, o camuffare, ma che presto innesta il gioco delle somiglianze. E allora si finisce facilmente per approdare nel Congo, all’epoca Zaire, sotto il dittatore Mobutu, nella città di Kisangani, sull’ansa del fiume Congo.
Una delle anse, trattandosi di fiume molto sinuoso.
Altro aspetto che mi ha colpito e affascinato è il protagonista Salim, con le sue origini di arabo indiano, o indo-arabe.



Una comunità di origine indiana che si è insediata da lungo tempo sulla costa orientale africana, senza però riuscire davvero a inserirsi nel contesto umano, continuando a restare gruppo a sé. Sono per lo più commercianti e mercanti. Sono stati talvolta (spesso?) mercanti di schiavi, negrieri.
Il continente si sta liberando dal giogo colonialista, ci sono fermenti, rivolte, violenza: “un’alba perpetua”.
Salim, l’io narrante, ha vent’anni e vuole migliorare la sua condizione sociale ed economica. Rileva da un amico un negozio bottega in una città nel centro dell’Africa, in un paese che è in pieno sommovimento. È molto probabile che il negozio sia stato distrutto, e/o saccheggiato: ma lui in ogni caso deve farlo ripartire da zero. Cominciare daccapo.



Parte in auto e attraversa mezzo continente, un viaggio di una settimana, dalla costa al centro dell’Africa, nella città alla curva del grande fiume.
L’accostamento spesso fatto con Conrad e con uno dei suoi capolavori, Heart of Darkness, non è così azzardato: Naipaul è bravo a costruire e mantenere la tensione per le quasi trecento pagine del romanzo, spesso alludendo più che nominando, seminando presagi più che accadimenti.
Il viaggio di Salim è simmetrico e opposto a quello di Marlow che risalì il fiume Congo partendo da ovest, dall’oceano Atlantico: Salim invece parte da est, dall’oceano Indiano.
La sua mèta si identifica con la città di Kisangani, che Conrad chiamava Stanleyville.



Il servitore Metty, un ragazzo meticcio, che a un certo punto sceglie di tradire Salim denunciandolo per commercio illegale di avorio.
La mercante congolese Zabeth che sale e scende lungo il fiume sulla sua zattera, arriva per vendere la sua merce, riparte dopo averne acquistata altra, un po’ maga un po’ navigatrice: un giorno presenta a Salim suo figlio Ferdinand che è venuto per frequentare il liceo, e gli chiede di tenerlo d’occhio, glielo affida. Il missionario belga padre Huismans che colleziona maschere africane, destinato a sorte tragica. Il Grande Uomo, dietro cui si nasconde il dittatore Mobutu, che vuole cancella re il passato coloniale, ma il presente che introduce è altrettanto oscuro e violento. Yvette, la donna bianca di cui s’innamora Salim, e della quale diviene amante, moglie di un europeo: la relazione dura poco, una meteora.
E Salim parte per Londra.



Quando torna troverà che il suo negozio è stato nazionalizzato, e quindi espropriato. E troverà che Ferdinand, il figlio di Zabeth, è diventato un giovane funzionario al servizio del dittatore, che gli darà una mano, anche se l’aiuto è per sopravvivere più che per quel balzo avanti che Salim cercava.
La spinta rivoluzionaria postcoloniale s’è esaurita (presto), il Grande Uomo non ha mantenuto promesse e proclami, l’odio per il bianco ha accecato lo sguardo verso il futuro, e si è riproposta la solita legge del più forte e del più prepotente: come il fiume Congo con le sue curve e la sua vegetazione risucchia e si riprende ciò che l’uomo costruisce, così il cuore nero ha spazzato via sogni e speranze. L’alba è tornata a essere notte.


Felix Vallotton: Les Andelys (un particolare sulla copertina della mia edizione).
Profile Image for Sunil.
171 reviews84 followers
August 13, 2016
I always find it difficult to talk about the books I really like. Especially so if it is a Naipaul book. I read The Bend again this year and found it much more ensorcelling than first time around . I guess what is so appealing about the book is its sense of diligence, a discipline which attempts to faithfully reflect the emerging world in Africa, as it is. No more no less. Perhaps, this is why, even after half a century and million more theses written on Africa, it still reflects the essence of Africa as none of them do.

I suppose most paperback readers find it inane or even boring. But, bear in mind it's not a transit read. It's not a fiction of plot or story. It is a narrative of reality. And like all realities that are known to man, has no beginning or ending. It is a snapshot of a typical third world problem ie a recently independent state or culture desparately trying to hold onto something as its own in the wake of emerging post-modernism. But it never has or had anything of its own, anything that would give it an identity in the contemporary world apart from the history of having been a colony. Therefore it tries to manufacture a past – leaders, tribes, dances, cameraderie. Oh! the vanities, the denials, the insecurities, amidst all that is forming and unforming, changing choices, conflicting values. But it is what it is.

Then there is the beauty of Naipaul prose. God! How it flows. Delicate, sublime, perfect yet letting the reader to make his own mind without patronizing or simplifying the sentiment. What I found most incredible in the book is the style used to pastiche the complex reality, so unhurriedly, so gracefully; as the book moves forward, it feels like a wave slowly falling and receding on a shore – adding something to the before, yet taking away something after; letting all the voices to speak on their own terms, to express their own realities to ultimately add up a grand reality that none of them can access in toto.

Here is a wonderful instance – Indar is so ashamed of his third world identity that he desparately wants to trample his own past… ‘It isn’t easy to turn your back on the past. It isn’t something you can decide to do just like that. It is something you arm yourself for, or grief will ambush and destroy you.

And Raymond with his first world citizenship, so much yearns for the True Africa that his own past has no bearing on his personal life. This leads to his wife's discontent and her confusion. Here's Raymond musing on Africa.. I was sitting in my room and thinking with sadness about all the things that have gone unrecorded. Do you think we can ever get to know the truth about what has happened in Africa in the last hundred or even fifty years? All the wars, all the rebellions, all the leaders, all the defeats?

It doesn’t occur to you when you are reading it but as you move along, as the impressions of their characters are better formed , suddenly, somewhere in the next chapter perhaps, it occurs to you , that these two completely different men from completely different worlds are so unknowingly seeking each other’s past. They are only allowed to seek, ...Indar seducing Yvette or Raymond wanting to be Mommsen of Africa .., but never find. But they cant give up.

Hence the world is what it is, always in movement.
Profile Image for Paul Bryant.
2,383 reviews12.2k followers
March 12, 2021
“What’s this? Three measly stars for a book by a writer Mr Robert McCrum called “the greatest living writer of English prose” and said A Bend in the River was his masterpiece. And he includes it in his list of the 100 best novels EVER. Like, EVER.”

“Well, you know, a cat may look at a king and blah blah…”

“So what was the problem this time? Or maybe you just don’t like novels anymore? Ever thought of that?”

“Well I guess I thought that VS Naipaul was Johnny One Note. You’ll remember him :

Johnny could only sing one note
And the note he sang was this:

Everything’s going to hell in a hand basket, especially in Africa.


“That’s it? 300 pages of everything’s going to hell?”

“Well, yeah, kind of. Salim the narrator is totally depressed and almost sleepwalks through the whole thing, except the part where he beats up his girlfriend ('I used my foot on her then'), he sparks into life for that bit. Oh, and the girlfriend says she didn’t mind.

Do you want me to come back? The road is quite empty. I can be back in twenty minutes. Oh, Salim. I look dreadful. My face is in an awful state. I will have to hide for days.

This girlfriend also says this famous quote :

Women are stupid. But if women weren’t stupid the world wouldn’t go round.

“Ah, I am detecting another snowflakey response here…”

“It’s just the usual thing – it would be infantile to think the author is nasty like his own characters – but it does seem the beating up of the girlfriend was something the author actually did do at least once, according to the authorised biography.”

“But I think it’s a well known fact that VS Naipaul was not going to win a prize for selling the most gingerbread cookies on behalf of the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, he was pretty much a professional curmudgeon. So none of this is hold the front page.”

“Well, I acknowledge that to be quite true. But I’m a bit bemused by how much praise this miserable novel gets. A Bend in the River is an equal opportunities slagfest, everybody gets it in the neck, Africa, Europe, the USA, there’s a general all-purpose sneer and despairing shrug that can feel stifling for a poor reader. Like, come on, VS, don’t you have a good word for anything? No? But the book itself is a complicated case.”

“How so?”

“Well the author was from an Indian Hindu family but he was born in Trinidad then moved to England. This novel is about life in Zaire, as it was then, under the unpredictable great ruler Mobutu Sese Seko Kuku Ngbendu Wa Za Banga who had a baffling way of describing his politics : “neither left nor right, nor even centre”. So this is a post-colonial country and Naipaul the outsider is writing about Salim, another outsider. For pages and pages we get generalisations about Africa flung about like confetti and the strong implication is that Mobutu, and by extension other African dictators, are making a terrible job of running the country. But Salim is such a passive whiner – everything is mildewed, my shop is going down the drain, I hate all my friends, I’m rotting away here in the back of beyond which I volunteered to come to. Oh me, oh my. It's impossible to drum up much sympathy for his sorry ass.

Everyone had become more greedy and desperate. There was this feeling of everything running down very fast, of a great chaos coming

and so forth....”

“So to counter the bracing misanthropy of Sir VS Naipaul, Nobel laureate, (you see how the establishment loved this guy) you should probably read Mary Poppins in Cherry Tree Lane next, or perhaps The Little House on the Prairie."

“Well, there’s no need for that.”

“Or Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.

“No, not Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.


(Somebody should have told Salim this.)
8 reviews
July 11, 2008
I read this book in Central Africa, during my Peace Corps service. I maintain that it is the best, most accurate depiction of Central African society - a broad term, believe me, I know, but still - that I have read.

I found this novel engrossing and moving, and it inspired me to begin collecting Naipaul's other works; all of which are good, albeit not as good as this one.

Naipaul has been criticized for denigrating third world countries and societies. Strange, since he comes from one - he was born in Trinidad but lives today in the UK - but the truth is that Naipaul's greatest sin is, as is too often the case, simply telling the truth. Many characters in this book, for example, feign sophistication they don't have, views they've lifted verbatim from a news clipping which they don't really understand at all, and in many other ways try to grapple with a modern world that is utterly beyond anything they comprehend, as they have only a village-level perspective on the world. These characterizations make liberal white people sitting in the West uncomfortable; but that's their problem, and - like those characters - arise primarily from a lack of perspective of what life is really like on the third-world side.
Profile Image for Quo.
334 reviews
May 16, 2021
In his 1979 novel, Bend in the River, V. S. Naipaul captures the climate of disruptive & unpredictable transition from colony to a newly independent African country at the center of the continent. The author also portrays the condition of Asians within Africa, people who exist as perpetual expatriates, born in Africa but in no way "African", not accepted as citizens of any country & always keenly in search of shelter elsewhere, anywhere.



Salim, the novel's central character is said to be from a background of Muslim traders & shop owners with roots on the coast of Africa but is now living inland at a heavily forested, bend-in-the-river post that was previously defined as a European administrative center but which is gradually being "Africanized". This transformation has caused upheaval for the few remaining Europeans and especially for the Asians, in this case people from India, whose ancestors came many decades prior to the 1947 partition, a group almost fatally caught in the grip of change.

Naipaul deftly delineates the class system, including the one present within various African tribes and those who are tribally or racially mixed. "Metty", Salim's loyal & rather servile helper at the small shop he owns, is threatened because he works for a non-African.

There are also those like Ferdinand, from a tall, Nilotic tribal group, a warrior people who are seen by Europeans & other Africans as being "the highest kind of African" but they are a distinct minority in the town & thus as vulnerable as the Asians. Amidst the changes, the country's president is seen as the "Big Man", someone ruthlessly using his power, especially on those who had been in favor in colonial times, with unresolved murders a frequent occurrence. Salim considers...
I knew things about the forest kingdom. I knew that the former slave people were in revolt & were being butchered back into submission. But Africa was big. The bush muffled the sound of murder and the muddy rivers & lakes washed the blood away.


In fact, Fr. Huismans, a Belgian priest & headmaster of a local school, someone in love with Africa & its traditions has just been murdered & no one seems very keen to unravel who killed the man. Most of the other white people had been driven out at independence, when...
the region had gone mad with anger & fear--all the accumulated anger of the colonial period, aimed at Europeans & also at Arabs, with every kind of tribal fear reawakened. The local people hated the intruders who had ruled it and they had preferred to destroy the town rather than take it over. Having destroyed the town, they grieved for it. The less educated we were, the more at peace we were.
Thus, statues & monuments with Latin & French inscriptions had been desecrated. Among those left behind, there is a quality of learning to survive, of just "carrying on", that seems pervasive. The president has taken it upon himself to restore such towns, even employing an intellectual European, "the Big Man's white man" & other consultants to add vigor to the restoration process. And throughout it all, the steamship continues to travel up & down the river to the nation's capital, a linkage that seems important to all. There is a vivid description of hyacinths floating down the river, serving as a kind of connective tissue.



I lived in a far more stable country in East Africa, teaching at an up-country boarding school just prior to Naipaul's time in Central Africa, most likely the Congo, and yet much of his portrayal of life in a newly-independent African country seems uncommonly familiar. What made my life different was an American passport, unlike the many seemingly stateless Asians, several generations removed from the Indian subcontinent, including present-day Pakistan. Salim reflects:
Nothing stands still. Everything changes. I will inherit no house & no house I build will now pass to my children. That way of life was gone. I have only been waiting & I will wait for the rest of my life. The flat I live in had been the Belgian lady's but now it has changed again. I felt all the child's heartache at being in a strange place. I was homesick but home was hardly a place I could return to. Home was just something in my head, something I had lost. And in that way, I was like the ragged Africans who were so abject in the town we serviced.
One adaptable Asian character named Nazruddin manages to flee to Uganda & when things disintegrate there, to Canada and then after a business venture fails, eventually attempts to seek refuge in England. In time, a People's Liberation Force ravages the town & those trapped within it, Africans included. This group pledges war against "all capitalists, imperialists, multinationals & puppet-powers that act as false gods." A general disintegration of authority occurs.

Many Africans perish without explanation while others are imprisoned, as is Salim for a time:
Those faces of Africa! Those masks of child-like calm that had brought down the blows of the world, and of the Africans as well, now in jail. I felt that I had never seen them so clearly before. Those faces were not vacant or passive or resigned. There was with the prisoners as with their active tormentors, a frenzy.

But the frenzy had taken them far beyond their cause or even knowledge of their cause, far beyond thought. They had prepared themselves for death not because they were martyrs; but because they were & what they knew they were was all they had. I never felt closer to them, or more far away.
The bend-in-the-river town that once had as its optimistic Latin motto, taken from The Aeneid: Miscerique probat populos et foedera jungi, or "he approves of the mingling of the peoples & their bonds of union" was now in free-fall, full of nervous, unhappy people, all attempting to stay out of harm's way, particularly as the president, who is fond of staging executions to test the loyalty of his people, is due to pay a visit to the town, causing further stifling fear & abundant chaos. Naipaul alludes to something similar afflicting the market stalls:
Basins of grubs & caterpillars; baskets of trussed-up hens, squawking when they were lifted up by one wing by the vendor or a prospective buyer; dull-eyed goats on the bare scuffed ground, chewing at rubbish & even paper; damp-haired young monkeys, full of misery, tethered tightly around their narrow waists & nibbling at peanuts & banana skin & mango skin but nibbling without relish, as though they knew that they themselves were soon to be eaten.
I found the evocations of village life & the shifting relationships among the various well-drawn characters in post-colonial Africa colorfully rendered, exceedingly well cast. Bend in the River is a novel I've just reread, having first read it just after it was published, with Naipaul fully in charge of his ample literary gift.



There are a few sections I found less enthralling, including the detailing of Salim's intimate connection with Yvette, the young wife of the much older "Big Man's white man" but beyond that, I very much savored rereading the novel, set in a provincial way-station on the river in Central Africa, at a perilous time when so much was adrift in the lives of the people who resided at the bend-in-the-river.

*Within my review are images of: the author V.S. Naipaul; an updated shot of Matadi, a bend-in-the-river town in Congo; an older image of a steamboat on the Congo river; a version of the novel's cover.
Profile Image for Dmitri.
245 reviews230 followers
May 4, 2025
"The world is what it is. Men who are nothing, who allow themselves to be nothing, have no place in it." - V S Naipaul

************

Naipaul's narrator Salim is a young Muslim Indian who grew up on the east coast of Africa. Looking to make his way in the world he moves to central Africa along the Congo. He buys a shop and flat and begins a business. The town is a former European colony ravaged by a war of independence. The buildings and parks are in ruins, now occupied by refugees from the surrounding villages.

Salim is critical of the social instability, poverty and aimlessness around him. Although not yet a man of the world his thoughts resemble those of Naipaul. Rebellion threatening the countryside the war is put down by Big Man, second president of the new nation, likely a stand-in for Mobutu and Zaire. Peace and prosperity return to the town as Big Man's army trades in ivory and gold.

Father Huismans translates the two thousand year old latin poetry inscribed on the steamboat dock: 'God approves the mingling of people in Africa', taken from Virgil's Aeneid. Salim discovers the original poem said: 'The gods might not approve'. A friend, Indar, recently graduated from a world university, lectures on New Africa in the college. He reflects Naipaul's alienation on arrival from a colony.

Salim becomes obsessed with Yvette, the wife of a white professor connected to Big Man, the first real love of his life. Brothels and adultery were part of the world of Naipaul as was Africa where he taught in 1966. Salim and Yvette were refugees from other places trapped in a past imperial backwater. Their lives mirror those of Naipaul and the mistress he met prior to writing this book.

The economic boom is over as Big Man fights more rebels in the bush. Salim visits Nazruddin in London, a family friend who sold him his shop and whose daughter he is expected to marry. He finds the world crowded with Africans and Asians, living as they did before they arrived. Returning to Africa he faces crooked bureaucrats and police. The story races forward towards a terrifying conclusion.

Naipaul didn't win the Booker Prize for this novel but it was short listed. There were reactions from critics who said he perpetuated the European myths in his depiction of a post-colonial decay. Edward Said argued he was "a witness for the western prosecution". Naipaul may have been seen as having ethnocentric views but wrote honestly of what he saw. And as he said, the world is what it is.
Profile Image for Praveen.
193 reviews370 followers
January 4, 2022
If I weigh up this book against the three major fictional works that I have read so far of the author I have found the writing of the author in this book a cut above the rest. Though I set foot into the V.S. Naipaul’s literary world first through his booker winning book In a Free State and Last year I read Miguel Street too, I found this book more appealing to me from a writing perspective. I am not considering the non-fictional work of the author for such a comparison. A few chapters from his India: A Wounded Civilization had some impressions over me already at a young age.

This book is not for all. There is not much excitement and thrill quotient to get into this book for a general reader. But here I must say that I read this book quite quickly and despite not having very compelling subject matter, I couldn’t put this book down. There is something in the writing of this book. I am not getting an unerring word to describe it but there was unequivocally something in the writing. Maybe I liked its contemplative and solicitous tone throughout. The writing was simple and no clichés have been used and it has a sort of sweep in the narration. A reader in me very much appreciates this sort of effortless and elegant narrative pattern. I could glide over it.

This book is written in four parts. The first part makes a backcloth for the entire novel in the form of introducing the characters. The narrator, Salim, is an Indian-origin man, living in the better part of Africa and setting his business there, He bought a shop from Nasruddin, and set his business there. Zabeth, a strong and fearless woman from the fishing community becomes her earliest loyal customer. Her character portrayal was amusing in the beginning. Her son is Ferdinand and he has been handed over to Salim for some time in his shop so that he may learn something.

The relationship between the characters has been set up very well, all major and minor characters I liked factually as well as emotionally. Here are very few characters in the novel. They are just six or seven. The build-up of relations among people who came together through a twist of fate or out of economic or colonial compulsion was nicely done.

“He was something of a palmist and his readings were valued because he could do them only when the mood took him. He was on a bentwood rocker, rocking unsteadily from the edge of the carpet to the concrete floor. He asked for my hand. He felt the tips of my fingers, bent my fingers looked briefly at my palms, and then let my hand go. He thought for a little about what he had seen. it was his way of thinking about what he had seen rather than looking at the hand all the time and he said, “you are the most faithful man I know.” this did not please me. It seemed to me he was offering me no life at all. I said, “Can you read your own hand? Do you know what's in store for you?”



This book is about the constant fight of civilizations. It is also about exile and aspiration. The after-effect of colonialism in a newly independent state and the concept of emerging Africa has been explored through contemplative discourse by the author. It talks about the old Africa and a new world. Life opportunities for betterment within Africa and outside are a constant fight.
Nazarudin wants to leave for Uganda, for better prospects within Africa,

“Do you know Uganda? a lovely country. It's three to four thousand feet up and people say it's like Scotland with the hills. The British have given the place the finest administration you could ask for. Very simple, very efficient. Wonderful roads. And the Bantu people there are pretty bright.”


It in the latter parts shows the effect of rebellion on the lives and economy of people settled there. The eastern part of Africa has been described in an indicative manner. Salim reaches to England and thinks there of his plans and prejudices,

“In Africa all the course I had paid attention only to one color in nature- the color of the sea. Everything else was just bush green and leaving for brown and dead. In England, I had so far walked with my eyes at the shop level. A town even London was just a series of street or Street names and Street was a row of shops. Now I saw differently and I understood that London wasn't simply a place that was here as people say of mountains but that it had been made by men that men had given attention to details as minute as those camels.”


When he returns, radicalization had occurred at his place in Africa. The businesses have been nationalized and he becomes the manager of his own business. A president is a powerful person. But power has been misused. At times, I found the story taking allegorical form and dictating the meaning and consequences of wrong politics in the name of making a new world, here the word ‘New Domain’ has been used by the author for those insinuations.

A very good reading experience from the writing point of view!

I liked this book for one more reason…
For its simultaneous portrayal of exile, aspirations, and corruption at both individual and political levels!
Profile Image for Rowena.
501 reviews2,729 followers
January 8, 2013
This book had such a promising start. Naipaul's descriptions of mid-20th Century Africa were great and I think he did a terrific job of highlighting tribalism and what it must feel like to be considered an outsider in Africa. There weren't too many likeable characters in this book. I started off liking Salim because he was a young Indian man who left his home on the coast to go to a town along old slave trails. However, his sexism was too much for me. Obviously Naipaul feels Africa is a dark continent with no hope for the future, I'm not sure why this book features so often on African book lists.

Edited to add: I don't think I will be reading anymore Naipaul books. He is under the impression that there is not a single female writer, both living or dead, who can measure up to him. I can think of more than a few, sir :/
Profile Image for K.D. Absolutely.
1,820 reviews
June 17, 2010
My copy of this book is a POB (previously owned book). There are a lot of scribbles using different colors of highlighters (pink, yellow and green). In one of the pages is a name: Danielle Sidari. I googled her name yesterday and one of these days I will invite her to be my friend in Facebook. Who knows?

Anyway, it is my first time to read a book with a lot of scribbles. Danielle is not a bad reader. Rather her comments and the phrases she underlined seem to indicate that she is smart. There is just a page (p 191) where she wrote: "Ironic" and this is the part where the narrator, Salim says that he finds adultery as horrible when in fact he is sleeping with a friend's wife, Yvette. Danielle seemed to have missed what Naipaul wrote on page 197, just 6 pages away from the line she finds ironic:

"That (adultery) was my pride. It was also my shame, to have reduced my manhood just to that. There were times, especially during slack periods in the shop, when I sat at my desk (Yvette's photographs in the drawer) and found myself mourning. Mourning, in the midst of physical fulfillment which could not have been more complete! There was a time when I wouldn't have thought it possible."

However, this novel is a lot more than adultery. This is the 1979 novel that established V. S. Naipaul, 2001 Nobel laurate, as a literary force. This is about an unnamed African country (they say it is Democratic Republic of Congo previously known as Zaire) after it gained independence from Belgium in June 1960. As for its theme, the opening line seems to be saying it all: The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. The transfer of power from Belgium to the "Big Man" (they say this is President Mabutu Sese Seko) is a struggle in itself that reminds me of the transfer of power from Marcos to Aquino in 1986. But life has to go on and for me this is the overall theme of this book: the changing of time. There is a very nice allegory that opens the second chapter "The New Domain":

"If you look at a column of ants on the march you will see that there are some who are stragglers or have lost their way. The column has no time for them; it goes on. Sometimes the stragglers die. But even this has no effect on the column. There is a little disturbance around the corpse, which is eventually carried off- and then it appears so light. And all the times the great busyness continues, and the apparent socialibility, that rite of meeting and greeting which ants travelling in opposite directions, to and from their nest, perform without fail."

The above passage reminds me of how I was fascinated watching ants when I was a small child.

This book is almost perfect but there is just one line that spoiled it for me. On page 186, I lost a bit of respect for Naipaul as he wrote:

"But if women weren't stupid the world wouldn't go round"

Danielle put a pink question mark on this.

I hate sexist people. I do not have respect for men who belittle women. I have many women in my life and I love them all: my mother, my (only) wife, my daughter, my sister, my mother-in-law, my sisters-in-law, my grandmother, my aunts, my many cousins, my friends, my officemates, etc. Hence, I am giving this a two stars less than amazing. For the love of women in my humble life.
Profile Image for Marc.
3,389 reviews1,846 followers
May 15, 2019
Beautiful, multi-layered story, set in an unnamed African country, but very simular to the Congo or Zaïre in the time of dictator Mobutu. The storyteller, Salim, is of Indian origin, and takes over a shop in a town, deep inland, (by a bend in the river), just after independence. He observes the waves of unrest and uncertainty and the rise of a Great Man in the capital.

You can read this novel as a lucid political story (the making of a gruesome dictator, and how different people cope with it), a fine psychological story (the search for its own place in life and the desillusions accompanying it), an exploration of the African soul (though Naipaul can be very stereotypical about that), and a study on cultural interaction or non-interaction.

This novel reminded me of the better work of Graham Greene, but without the morality-layer. There also was a bit too much of Conrads 'Heart of Darkness' ("the horror, the horror") in it. I know he hasn't a good reputation when it comes to racism and other issues, but I definitely have to read more by Naipaul!
Profile Image for Genia Lukin.
246 reviews200 followers
March 9, 2016
Why do people read this creep?

Why do they indulge him, give him prizes, accolades, titles? How is this man's being the darling of the literary establishment not screaming to the world of a huge problem that we have in our priorities, in our regard, in our purported striving for equality or, I don't know, something.

Here is a man who writes 19th Century sentiment - really, more of an 18th Marquis de Sadian sentiment - in the middle of the 20th, and no one in the establishment that doles out Nobels, Bookers, and knighthoods, seems to mind. Here is a man who apparently brutally beats his own mistress, but instead of going to jail and being forgotten there, like he should, he exemplifies post-colonial writing. The hell, world?

So, is the man actually a good writer? Yeah, I guess he is. I did finish the book, aside from an undisclosed amount of glossing, after all. Is he a better writer than the women writers he derides? Eh, nope. Is he Nobel-worthy? I can't answer that because in my opinion half the Nobel laureates out there weren't, but he's no Nabokov, okay?

That's not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is that this man is harmful, destructive. not in the passive well-he-does-no-good-to-anyone-and-is-an-ass sort of way, but in the actual, intentional, egomaniacal sort of way that actively goes out there and makes the world a slightly worse place than it's been before. His books, and the establishment's promotion of them, actually outright wreck the world. They say that loving your wife and caring about what she thinks is stunting (yes, he says that, or his main character and narrator does), and that beating your mistress is a natural result of jealousy towards her husband. They imply that a little nobody with zero personality can automatically get the good-looking girl, and that he can then spit at her, and this is a cathartic scene.

So here is my call out to the men and especially women of this world - don't rate his books highly, don't recommend them, don't forgive them based upon the 'beauty of the style'. The beauty isn't sufficient, and the harm is great.
Profile Image for Books Ring Mah Bell.
357 reviews353 followers
May 8, 2009
4/30 here we go....

I hear it sucks.

5/7/09

A total snoozefest.

Naipaul is a Nobel Prize winner?
That's crust!

I did a bit of research on Naipaul as I was reading this thinking, "are you freaking kidding me?!?!" Rave reviews in Newsweek, New York Times.. and on and on and on. The Nobel Committee compared Naipaul to Joseph Conrad, saying, "Naipaul is Conrad's heir."

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Maybe that's just me sticking up for Conrad, author of Heart of Darkness (and fellow Pole!)

Or perhaps it's just me recognizing subpar literature for what it is.

*The best part of this book was a sticky note on page 200 that said, "I can't believe you made it this far"
Thanks, D. Russ!
Profile Image for Brad Lyerla.
214 reviews228 followers
July 15, 2022
The news that V.S. Naipal had won the Nobel Prize for Literature came shortly after the shocking events of 9-11. The Wall Street Journal hailed the news and editorialized that Naipal was especially worthy as a third world author who embraced the values of the west. Quoting A BEND IN THE RIVER, the Journal argued that Naipal's message is that men in the third world should be judged by the same standards as men in the industrialized west.

For some reason, the Journal's assessment of A BEND IN THE RIVER was on my mind as I read it the past several days.

It does seem likely that Naipal would have sympathy for the notion that humankind everywhere should be judged by the same standards. He favors that those standards should reflect certain, not all, western political values. This is most vivid as he rejects the common view that everything about colonialism in Africa was evil, even offering an apology for slavery that is reminiscent of Aristotle's defense of slavery in the Ethics. (Aristotle describes the slave's role in a happy household as one of respect and importance . . . huh?* But Naipal describes traditional slavery in east Africa in similar terms.)

But that is not Naipaul's central message. A BEND IN THE RIVER explores the Hobbesian view that, in his natural state, each man is at war with every other man. That state of nature has been realized in times of civil war in post-colonial central Africa and Naipal's depiction of it is terrifying. Hobbes' solution to this horrifying natural state is for men to surrender their autonomy to a strong king who is given near absolute authority in exchange for order, security and safety. This solution has been attempted in post-colonial central Africa. Naipal's "Big Man" is just such a leader. But in late 20th century central Africa, he cannot guarantee his own safety against tribalism and violence, much less the safety of the populace. His government becomes only slightly less horrifying than no government at all.

When I search for a message, I conclude that Naipal is wondering about the role of institutions in moderating the behavior of humans. He acknowledges that the institutions of colonialism protected the populace against violence, whereas the post-colonial politics of central Africa have failed to create such institutions. This is not an argument for colonialism. Rather, it is an inquiry about institutions and their role in protecting humankind from our natural state, as Hobbes' envisions it.

*Postscript: I am reading Melzer’s Philosophy Between the Lines currently. He causes me to question whether this statement of Aristotle’s is an example of esoteric writing. That is, Aristotle did not actually believe what he wrote in this regard, but wrote it for the ‘good ordering of society’ and it, therefore, constitutes a “noble lie”. Exoteric/esoteric writing is a challenge for casual readers of philosophy like me. I do not have time to become a full time scholar, which might be the only way to reliably discern exoteric from esoteric philosophy.
Profile Image for Dave Russell.
74 reviews128 followers
April 14, 2008
This is a lousy boring book. Naipaul seems very interested in telling us How The World Works, or at least how it works in Africa (he does know Africa is a continent and not a country, right?) The problem, though, is that this is ostensibly a novel and not a work of non-fiction, and Naipaul isn't a very good storyteller. He mostly narrates rather than dramatizes. There are long, long passages where there is no dialogue, which would be all right if something interesting actually happened in those passages.
I always thought it was a shame that Kurt Vonnegut never won the Nobel Prize for Literature. After having read Jelinek's The Piano Teacher and now this book, I think that actually speaks well for Vonnegut.
Oh, and great idea using a river as your central symbol. I don't think that's ever been done before.
Profile Image for Jayakrishnan.
539 reviews219 followers
April 13, 2023
A Bend in the River begins with one of the most devastating opening lines ever written in a novel. It goes like this: The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. Upon reflection, the line sounds like it came out of a speech by a ruthless dictator. Or it could exemplify the unspoken ethical code according to which the people of a country live. Here, it is Naipaul’s way of introducing the reader to the brutal landscape of post-colonial Africa, seen through the eyes of Salim, a young Muslim descendant of Arab invaders or traders.

Salim buys a shop in a far-off African country which has seen some violence between local tribes, to commence his career as a trader. For Salim, his career as a trader in a new country is also an escape from his family and community which he finds constricting and unsafe. There is that sense of anomie and insecurity in Salim that are recurring characteristics among Naipaul’s characters. “I had to break away. I couldn’t protect anyone; no one could protect me …..” Salim laments.

Violence is a regular occurrence in the new town where Salim becomes a trader. But the immigrants (Arabs, Indians, Greeks, Belgians and Italians) stay away from it and learn to live with it as Africans butcher each other. They postpone the inevitable through bribes or plain ignorance. But they know the violence is bound to reach their doorstep eventually. Everyone who lives in the town right from Salim to the powerless white mentor of the ruthless president (who is called the big man) is scarred in some way or the other. And they’re all doomed, none of them seem to have a clue about the future - what they would do or where they would go if they were forced to leave Africa.

Naipaul does not have a particularly good opinion of Africa. The Africans in the novel are portrayed as people who had to repress a part of themselves to adapt to the new European way after colonization. But only some are successful, many of them want to go back to the “way of the bush”. The slaves owned by Salim’s family do not seem to want to gain freedom while the African who forcefully takes over Salim’s business struggles with his new position as a master. The new president of the country imposes his authority on the nation through extreme acts of violence. Naipaul seems to suggest that one of the reasons for the violence could be sexual repression.

In The Enigma of Arrival (Naipaul’s autobiographical novel) the main character who finds fulfillment during his life in a vast English manor becomes insecure when Mr. Phillip, the able servant of the manor dies. He sees it as the beginning of the end of the secure life of the manor. In An Area of Darkness, Naipaul senses the end of Europe and the beginning of the third-world as his ship reaches Greece. For the people in the town who are not African, the withdrawal of Europe from Africa is the end of their secure life.

Naipaul gives the reader a sense of what it is like to be a small expendable man in a continent on the verge of anarchy. His writings about colonized people are neither sympathetic nor overtly sentimental. He does not see them through a prism. He sees them as they are – wounded, rootless and constantly adapting to change as worlds and cultures collide. A Bend in the River is a bleak novel. But it is the best Naipaul that I have read so far.
Profile Image for John.
1,581 reviews124 followers
September 5, 2020
Salim is a Hindu from an Indian trading family on the East coast of Africa. He decides to move to a country and town most like Kinshasa in the Congo during the violent 1960s and 1970s. The opening lines in the book set the scene of this terrifying story: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”

Naipaul paints a town on the brink of chaos and violence with Salim’s shop the centre of the events happening and reflecting what happened to so many newly independent African countries. Salim takes us on a journey of violent change, poverty, degradation, corruption, greed, tribal warfare and uncertainty with violence never faraway. The President of the country the Big Man is an archetypal African dictator. He reminds me of Idi Amin from Uganda.

The story was a harbinger of future Africa and still happening today with corruption, tribal allegiance and warfare, genocide as well as endemic poverty and human degradation.
Profile Image for Jon Adcock.
179 reviews34 followers
June 22, 2015
The book examines the post-colonial turmoil that occurs in an unnamed African country soon after it's independence. However, this isn't a political thriller. Naipaul takes his time with the story and the pace is fairly leasurely as the both the setting and the characters are introduced and then developed in great detail. The main character is Salim, a man of ethnic Indian descent who relocates to a small town in the central African country. There he buys a small shop, makes friends with other expatriates, and observes the birth pains of his newly adopted country. A minor rebellion is quickly crushed and the newly elected President begins to consolidate his power and become more and more dictatorial as time passes. The tension does ratchet up towards the end of the book

The leasurely pace allows Naipaul to paint a complex picture of this slice of Africa. The culture is described in great detail and you get a feel for the town and it's people. The uneasy mix of modernality and traditional ways stands out quite often: a BigBurger franchise sits near market stalls where caterpillars, grubs, and monkeys can be bought for food. Throughout it all, the vestiges of the colonial past are still apparent. The town is dotted with the burned out ruins of the homes of the European masters who were tossed out when independence was achieved and their statues have been torn down or defaced.

Naipaul has been accused of being pro-colonialism because it's not a happy picture he paints. Corruption is rampant and bribes become the only way to get things done. The number of Government officials seems to increase almost daily and many of them often have little to do except to think of new ways to shake the foreign residents down for bribes. Through it all, the President's rhetoric takes on more and more the trappings of demagoguery. It's not a happy picture, but it's a scenario that has played out in real life a few too many times.
Profile Image for Riku Sayuj.
659 reviews7,599 followers
October 16, 2014
The characters felt like matchstick figures to me, somehow devoid of real life. I am not sure why though. The story is powerful and the flow of history is overwhelming, but I couldn't connect and experience it with them, and that was off-putting.
Profile Image for Alan.
Author 6 books367 followers
February 21, 2021
Read this soon after it appeared, my copy from Providence, RI in 1985. The title refers to the "centre of the continent"(20), where Naipaul's Indian I-narrator moves from the coast his ancestors settled. Naipaul lived in Africa when writer in residence at a Uganda university, and he travelled widely. Bend in the River is acutely in touch with African realities, while Bellow's Henderson is not: but, Bellow's is the better work.

I delayed reviewing Bend, which I find the only VSN I've read ( nearly 20) that's depressing, despite his usual genius with character types--the rich Indra who feels homeless, uses air flights to "adjust to his homelessness"(228); the ethtusiastic Nazruddin, "People looking for a broken man were disappointed" having fled through the bush (22); the tall woman Zabeth who buys from the narrator and takes goods up a small river, surprisingly seen locally as a magician (34); Mustafa the large black servant (themselves considered slaves, centuries of servitude) who carried little "I" on his shoulders, but when taunted by other boys, set him down, "encouraged me to fight, and when things got too hot for me, would lift me out of reach of the boys' feet and put me again on his shoulders"(13).

As in all his works, VSN here approves English colonialism (especially in his ancestral India, where VSN faults Hinduism for making achievement and mobility impossible--see Among the Believers); he is roundly detested by third world critics, for sentiments like:
"an Indian pilot led Vasco da Gama from East Africa to Calicut, the very word 'cheque' was first used by our Persian merchants-- if I say these things it is because I have got them from European books. Without Europeans, I feel our past would have been washed away, like the scuff marks of fishermen on the beach outside our town"(12).

When he finds that Nazruddin had a wife and kid, whom he was willing to abandon, the narrator tells him he cannot, but Nazruddin changes, no longer carefree and as optimistic. Resposibility had soured him. "And I too, breaking out of old ways, had discovered solitude and the melancholy which is the basis of religion"(108).


Profile Image for Pradnya.
318 reviews106 followers
March 22, 2019
I'd have loved to writ a detailed review of this book. Since the day I bought it in a pre-owned book shop till today, it was always on my mind. It was my first Naipaul book. Many say that it's not his best one, and I see why he keeps his readers hooked.
It's a story of a Salim, an Indian, who travels to Africa to try his luck and make some money and identity for himself. The story progresses with history of Africa, how the unnamed country undergoes the changes under rulers in post-colonial years. Salim, as an outsider observes it and without realizing becomes an inescapable part of it. The book is mostly about the daily lives of the shopkeeper, his quest to be something and be safe, his companions and their lives. The Africans don't make protagonist here.

For me the best part was the interpretation of man's quest of being someone important, his ambitions. I see all the characters of the story trying to get there : the President, a big man, going beyond measures and any logic, just to become a powerful person. Then Indar, a childhood friend of Salim, who after losing his wealth during the rebels, searching for his prominence, mostly in the Uniform of government. There's Ferdinand, always finding something superior about himself, and playing it downright at every chance (except in the end, he turns out very matured person there) Zabeth, mother of Ferdinand, equipped with mysterious powers Africans are so well known for, making her living by merchandising daily needed articles. And Salim himself, an educated person with high aims, unable to achieve his goals who comes to this town near the bend in the river, accepting it and almost rooted there when these all characters come to him with their stories, provoking him, compelling him to be something else than what he is.

The book is opulent with philosophical dialogues and thoughts. I have kept marker handy all the time after first half. The struggle of man to find peace, either to enjoy his status quo or to pursue his dreams is man's ultimate desire. The upheavals in history and rulers can disturb this basic need and how far it can impact the society is portrayed vividly. I found it quite complex, weaving mesh of history, philosophy, ethnicity, societal and modern times, with less of story and much of impact, something I love to read.
Profile Image for Joy D.
2,932 reviews308 followers
October 25, 2021
Protagonist and narrator, Salim, lives in central Africa in the 1960s-1970s. He has moved from the coast to run a shop in the interior located at the bend of a great river. It is a postcolonial novel, set in central Africa. The circumstances described in the novel are comparable to what happened in the Congo after the Belgians departed. The country is run by a corrupt President, known as the “Big Man,” who gradually increases his power base to that of a dictator.

This novel is supremely well-written. It is character-driven, so we meet the people in Salim’s circle, and we are privy to his thoughts. The theme is centered on what happens when civilization breaks down. The old rule of colonialism exploited the people. But the new rule is that of a Cult of Personality. It is based on corruption, fear, and oppression.

In this case, individuals who were previously striving for financial gain or recognition for their abilities, living in relative security, end up fearing for their lives. This fear negatively impacts their relationships and ways of interacting with others. We see Salim turn from a typical shopkeeper trying to make a decent living to a man of questionable ethics who is only saved from destruction by his status as an outsider.

The book portrays the basic need of all people to find a safe haven to fulfill their dreams and aspirations, and how social upheavals can wreak havoc on this basic need. This type of situation has occurred in history many times, and not solely in Africa. I cannot say it is a particularly “enjoyable” read but I appreciate its relevance.
Profile Image for Cherisa B.
669 reviews68 followers
October 20, 2023
A fairly short, profound, deeply engaging story about society and culture, being an Other (Indian in black Africa), post-colonialism in middle Africa, and the dreams of self-hood and nation-hood. The best Naipaul story I’ve read, and I thought A House for Mr. Biswas couldn’t be topped.
Profile Image for lucky little cat.
550 reviews118 followers
January 24, 2019
This was my college's required summer reading for incoming freshmen back in 1981. It gave me altogether wrong expectations of how culturally aware my tiny liberal arts school was. And of course no one else had read the book, not even the group counselor, so it was a classic summer-reading experience!
Profile Image for Nelson Zagalo.
Author 13 books448 followers
July 22, 2017
É verdade que o tema é a descolonização, o antes e o pós, impactos e efeitos, mas é mais do que isso, é um questionamento sobre aquilo que nos motiva a fixar objetivos, a acreditar em destinos, a procurar mais e melhor. É visto a partir da perspectiva africana, ainda que por um indiano que ali nasceu, servindo o romance para dar conta do seu "coming-of-age".

A escrita de Naipaul é boa mas não surpreende, pelo menos na tradução, já o tom imposto ao discurso esse sim é bastante particular, muito conseguido e coerente ao longo de todo o romance. Não é fácil definir esse tom, diria que é uma espécie de melancolia ausente, no sentido em que as emoções apontam para tristeza e desaire, mas ao mesmo tempo abnegação, permitindo que a atmosfera do livro se eleve, deixe respirar, sem condicionar o sentimento, e sem nunca permitir o definhamento completo da esperança. Como que sabendo que não valendo a pena, vai-se ainda assim fazendo o esforço, ainda que reduzido esse esforço, mas fazendo-o, como que para se manter à tona a respirar na espera por melhores dias. Tenho a sensação que se não tivesse passado por África já algumas vezes, teria dificuldade em conseguir compreender este tom, a mesma dificuldade que senti quando pela primeira vez tentei ver o filme "Terra Sonâmbula", adaptado do livro homónimo de Mia Couto, e que depois dessa experiência vi com outros olhos.

Naipaul consegue recriar a atmosfera africana no fio das páginas, o languido fundido com a tristeza, mesclada com a vontade de continuar a lutar ainda que devagar. É verdade que Naipaul não mede as palavras, é muito direto, roça o racismo, e há mesmo quem não lhe perdoe, mas nada do que é dito pode ser retirado de contexto e colocado na boca do autor. Escrever de modo politicamente correto seria bom para os críticos europeus, mas nunca conseguiria chegar ao âmago, e dar-nos a sentir o que verdadeiramente se sente no interior daquele continente. Aliás o que mais me impressionou na leitura foi exatamente ler a África pelos olhos de um não europeu e de um não-africano, existe uma espécie de imparcialidade que se cola aos personagens de Naipaul que nos permitem ver o que até aqui não tínhamos visto noutras obras com a África em pano de fundo.

“Quando se deu a independência, o povo da nossa região enlouqueceu de raiva e de medo – toda a raiva acumulada durante o período colonial, todos os medos tribais que entretanto tinham estado adormecidos. A gente da nossa região tinha sido muito maltratada, e não apenas pelos europeus e árabes, mas também por outros africanos; e quando veio a independência, recusaram-se a obedecer ao novo Governo instalado na capital."

Houve um momento em que quase fechei o livro, quando o protagonista desata a bater na amante, algo que se cola a algumas histórias que entretanto circularam a propósito do próprio Naipaul. A julgar pela descrição realizada, acredito que o autor o tenha feito nesse seu passado, mas não podemos, mais uma vez, descontextualizar as ações. Não posso de forma alguma defender o autor, mas não posso esquecer o que é viver numa sociedade que aprova e incentiva esses comportamentos.

Inevitavelmente o rio de Naipaul faz-nos recordar as trevas de Conrad, ainda que num tom distinto como já referi acima, e por isso difícil de aproximar. Naipaul sendo melancólico nunca permite a total negrura, não tem soluções, mas nunca fecha a porta, acredita claramente no ciclo da vida, sente-se ao longo de todo o livro, pela boca dos seus personagens, uma crença no princípio budista de que “Tudo é Impermanente!”.


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Profile Image for Jacob Appel.
Author 38 books1,591 followers
June 20, 2019
Even those Nobel Prize folks manage to get things right once in a while, and Naipul is certainly one of the most gifted and important writers of the second half of the twentieth century. "A Bend in the River," both one of his better novels and one of his two most well-known, offers a window into the thinking and experiences of Salim, an Indian-Muslim trader from coastal Africa who ventures into an unnamed African country (that is implicitly Mobuto's Zaire) during the post-colonial period.

The novel is told entirely from Salim's point-of-view, which may or may not have been Naipul's, and some of Salim's ideas about Africa may seem less than enlightened, but the key factor here (which is too often lost on critics) is that they are subjectively true to the narrator. Salim is a complex character (although he often perceives himself as a simple or even naive one) with some stellar attributes (loyalty, probity) and others that are far less appealing. The minor characters are vividly rendered and among the highlights of the work.

There are also gems of odd wisdom every few pages, wisdom that may or may not be true, but displays a particular Naipulian stamp. For example, Salim's French lover, speaking of her husband's ex-wife, says, "They say men should look at the lover of the girl they intend to marry.... Girls who [marry divorced men] should consider the wife a man has discarded or worn out, and know they are not going to do much better...."

Naipul is writing consciously in the footsteps of Conrad, and the novel is definitely one of ideas, which may render it a slower read to some readers. But Naipul's ideas, whether correct or misguided, are always good material for reflection. His descriptive writing is among the most compelling in the English language. I am candidly a bit puzzled that other reviewers found this novel a difficult read -- I re-read it this week in three sittings and the pages truly breezed by.

Read with an open mind, "A Bend in the River" is the work of a literary master at the top of his gave. I recommend this novel most strongly.


This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Czarny Pies.
2,778 reviews1 follower
May 11, 2023
In 1972, Idi Amin began expelling Asians from Uganda. I took little notice until I arrived at the MBA school of York University seven years later where I met a dozen of the expelled Asians.

They all told stories similar to the one of Salim the protagonist of this remarkable novel by V.S. Naipaul. The talked about the political complexity of life in post-colonial Africa and the efforts of their families to maintain their businesses in Africa in an increasingly hostile environment. Ultimately they all failed which is why they were studying with me in Canadian business school. They were certainly more sad than bitter and remembered the Africans who had tried so hard to support them during their time in Africa.

This novel is a masterpiece of authenticity and a great lament for a colonial society that arguably died a death it did not truly deserve.

V.S.Naipaul in my view was a very deserving Nobel Laureate.
Profile Image for Peter.
714 reviews110 followers
September 4, 2018
"Non-fiction can distort; facts can be realigned, but fiction never lies."

Set in an unnamed country which has recently won independence from colonial rule, this novel centres around Salim, a Indian Muslim whose family had settled in an Africa coastal town where they were traders. Salim is impressionable and believes that his family is mired in traditionalism. In an attempt to escape his family's expectations he buys a family friend's business and moves many miles to the interior to a town on 'A Bend in the River'. There he sets himself up as a trader and in doing so becomes an outsider, watching unfolding events with an outsider's nervousness.

The country's President, referred to as the Big Man, initially rules the country and the town with a relatively benign hand. Impressive buildings are built, young people are sent to schools and universities where they can earn cadet-ships and there is a boom but increasingly the people come to realise that they, villagers living in the bush, town squatters, traders and even the ruling officials alike, are all dependent on the whim of the Big Man. There is no coherent society in the country. There is only one single source of power, the Big Man.

The town when Salim initially arrives is largely in ruins, a victim of "African rage," against imperial humiliation but gradually rebuilding begins and Salim finds himself a modest niche within it. However, it is only ever a fairly tenuous one. Warned from the beginning to sell up when his stock reaches a certain level but despite this Salim decides to try and hold on.

I have read a few other reviews of this novel in which people complained that nothing really happens but personally I think that that is one of its strengths. Naipaul manages to succinctly portray Salim as a simple man struggling to understand the new Africa around him. It is an insightful piece of observation dotted with a gentle touches of irony. Naipaul has managed to create a sense of moral tension despite, seemingly, very little happens.

Naipaul has also created an interesting troupe of secondary characters. Mahesh, another Indian trader. always on the look out for money making schemes, willing to ride out the country's turbulent up and downs as long as he has his wife beside him. A Belgian priest who collects tribal masks, despite them visibly decaying, like the world from which they originated. A woman trader from the bush, Salim's first customer, who begs Salim to look after her son, Ferdinand, whilst he is a student in the town.

Best of all though is Raymond, a white intellectual, once the Big Man's advisor who has been moved out of the capital and now spends his time lecturing his provincial admirers on the Big Man's greatness. Raymond has been used and discarded by the Big Man but refuses to accept that his time of influence will not come again. The Big Man has a genius for manipulation and his greatest tool is fear. As Mahesh says, "It isn't that there's no right and wrong here. There's no right."

In contrast Salim prefers to try and avoid passing judgement, to be patient and as an 'outsider' to merely observe. However, when he returns from a trip to London to find that his business has been nationalised and then he is arrested and thrown in jail.

He is rescued by Ferdinand, the town's new commissioner, and warned to leave the town before things get any worse.
"We're all going to hell, and every man knows this in his bones. We're being killed. Nothing has any meaning. . . . Everyone wants to make his money and run away. But where? That is what is driving people mad. They feel they're losing the place they can run back to. I began to feel the same thing when I was a cadet in the capital. I felt I had given myself an education for nothing. . .I began to think I wanted to be a child again, to forget books. . .. The bush runs itself. But there is no place to go."

Ultimately Naipaul offers no hope of perspective salvation for the country's and perhaps Africa. There is no neat ending here and that is fitting because, at least in the short term, the mistakes of the past are likely to be repeated over and over again until hopefully a new generation, without the stigma of colonialist baggage are ready to assume power. As it says in the quote at the top of this review: "facts can be realigned, but fiction never lies".

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