Customer Reviews

Bend in the River

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Naipaul's "A Bend in the River" is almost as much reportage as fiction. The novel is set in the city of Kisangani, on the Congo River in Congo (formerly the Zaire river in Zaire) -- though interestingly, the author never says this explicitly. I have never seen an account as to what Naipaul's experiences in Zaire were exactly, but he manages to tell the story of the early days of Zaire's independence, after colonial rule as the Belgian Congo.

The protagonist is a young Indian from the Eastern coast. ("Indian" in the sense of his ethnicity, his family has been in Africa longer than they can remember.) He has purchased a shop in Kisangani, and trys to build up his business as the "big man" consolidates power in the newly independent country. Things go from bad to worse, for the new shopkeeper and the country. Though this is fiction, every word is true.

Naipaul writes beautifully, and has many insights into Africa, colonialism, history, and life. This is one of the few books that I have read and enjoyed more than once.

Some people recommend Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" to readers looking for an "African" novel. But to recommend "Things Fall Apart" over "A Bend in the River" makes sense only if you can read just a single book about Africa. Achebe's novel is set in Nigeria; Naipaul's is about Zaire. It's like saying don't bother with "Brothers Karamozov", read "Great Expectations" instead. I should hope a serious reader would turn his attention to both.

(The last days of the Belgian Congo is the setting for Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible". Many good nonfiction stories from this time and place are found in "A Doctor's Life: Unique Stories" by William T. Close. A literary approach to the early days of the Belgian Congo is Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness".)

Naipaul in one of his typically politically-incorrect interviews said these very words about the continent. A BEND IN THE RIVER is therefore a gloomy book and offers a pessimistic view of Africa. If Conrad had not already taken the title, then this book could easily have been called HEART OF DARKNESS. That's not a coincidence either as Naipaul is frequently compared to Conrad in terms of literary style and theme. The setting is the same also. Although A BEND.. takes place in a fictitious African country it can be read as either Congo or Uganda as it is based on his visits to those countries in the 1960's.

The principal character and narrator of the story is Salim, an Indian and Muslim. Indian merchant families like his have been living in the coastal area of the country for generations. The blacks live inland. Salim decides to move to a small, formerly-quaint colonial town in the interior to set up shop and sell cloth. He is immediately at a loss, in conflict, confused - a man in search of an identity in a country in search of itself. Salim must contend with the rapidly changing social, economic and political environment of the newly independent country while at the same time sort out his own world view in the face of the contending opinions of the other characters. There is the influence of the Big Man - and simply because he is president for life - his interests must be served. There are others: a Belgian priest; Raymond, the white speech writer for the Big Man; Yvette, Raymond's wife; Mahesh, a disillusioned Indian, and finally, the most unlikey important character - Ferdinand. He is a simple boy from the "bush", who, in this upside-down country, becomes Governor of the town after the nation is "radicalized" by the Big Man.

The newly-independent former-colony and the various cultural and political influences of the inhabitants are the foils for two of Naipaul's favorite themes. First is his affinity for, and identity with, dispossessed persons. Dispossessed in the personal sense of the word - no home, no country, no identity - a nobody. Following from this personal sense of rootlessness and anomie is Naipaul's un-romantic and oftentimes very critical assessment of the ability of developing countries to sustain the hopes and dreams of their people. This is ably summed up by Ferdinand. "We are all going to hell, and everyman knows this in his bones...everyone want's to make his money and run away. But where?"

Naipaul's prose is direct, not symbolic, so many students of Post Colonial literature have had a field-day dissecting Naipaul's various literary allusions and castigate him as a conservative and supporter of neo-colonialism. If that's your area of interest and particular world-view then you will definitely not enjoy A BEND.. If on the other hand you simply like well written, slightly satirical novels with finely-detailed characters and are inclined to not take writers or your reading material too seriously then this is a book you'll definitely enjoy.

This is one of those novels that can haunt the imagination for the rest of the reader's life. It is a true masterpiece of exploratory fiction, from the opening paragraph, "The world is what it is," to the closing images of moths "white in white light." Its world is brutal and alien, yet brings out the humanity, vanities, and hopes that all of us share. As a window into the mind of underdeveloped countries, it is unsurpassed. It is so superior to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, to which it is so frequently compared, that critics should not even mention them together.

The writing is plain, yet elegant, a quiet symphony as it portrays a journey of violence and despair and growth. Once I finished it, I read it again from cover to cover in a single sitting, transported into these alien lives that only occur in few novels I have ever read. As such, it can serve as the starting point of a lifelong inner conversation, the true mark of a classic.

This novel was written at the high point in Naipal's career. He was just becoming world famous and this one cemented his reputation. It is a pity that his subsequent works never quite matched the sweep and depth of voice in this novel. Now he is criticized, perhaps rightly, for his sexism, his pessimism, and his petty prejudices.

But this novel is one of the best I ever read.

This story has all the hallmarks of great fiction: moving, thoughtful prose; exotic setting (a post-colonial African country); fascinating storyline; tragic characters; grand themes. This was the first Naipaul story I have read, and now I know what all the fuss is about.

I found the writing very full, every sentence very active, moving the story forward in a staggeringly complete way. Salim is an Arab-African of Indian descent. He moves from the east coast of Africa to a town situated on a "bend in the river" in a central African country, presumably the former Belgian Congo, ostensibly to run a rudimentary general store, but more likely to delay finding what his real objectives in life are. He wants to experience the so-called "European" colonial culture of the town, and gets involved in the Hellenic Club, pursues an affair with the wife of a prominent political figure, and mentors his family servant Metty, and a young African, Ferdinand. In both these latter characters we see the symbolism of the "new" Africa, and the struggles in asserting identity, manhood, authority and organization. We get a glimpse into the sham intellectualism surrounding the educated elite, a world that Salim is drawn into but ultimately rejects. We see a man go from a kind of hope to a lazy idealism, then inertia, failing to change his life or make key decisions while the world around him is changing. The struggles of the country under its new leadership and the resistance from within all occur in the backdrop until they take center stage; this same pattern describes Salim in his approach to it all. He does not confront the emerging chaos until it is almost too late.

We see the country and atmosphere change dramatically: "This piece of earth - how many changes had come to it! Forest at a bend in the river, a meeting place, an Arab settlement, a European outpost, a European suburb, a ruin like the ruin of a dead civilization, the glittering Domain of a new Africa, and now this." The "this" he is referring to is the decay of the idealistic "Domain" which is a kind of centre of learning, symbolic of the emerging sophistication of the African mind - it has become overrun with weeds and collapsed, seeming to revert to its more basic, tribal incarnation.

I am sure Naipaul has had his share of criticism for his portrayal of race, slavery and women. That has always struck me as an unfair assessment of any fiction writer, as if there had to be an agenda or belief system underlying a writer's writings. I find the best fiction is usually where there is no agenda or motive, just a representation of real people and their idiosyncratic lives. I don't believe that he was necessarily trying to create a sympathetic character in Salim, just a realistic one. We live with a character who appears to be blown to and fro like a reed in the wind, making human choices but also steadily procrastinating.

At the end of this story, I felt as if I had been to central Africa, lived Salim's life, and had seen first hand the desolation and anarchy that overtook the once ideal-sounding "bend in the river". This is a book you can devour and then will chew on for long afterwards.

What a great novel this is! It tells the story of Salim who left his family home on the coast to start a business in central Africa at a town on the bend in the great Congo River. The inhabitants of the town, natives and expatriates, are described with empathy and an eye for detail.

Naipaul also narrates the history of the town as it is connected to the ups and downs of history, with great detail. His writing style is compelling and elegant, while the plot and characterization are superb. In many ways, the book illumines the post-independence history of those Africans that are of Indian descent.

Most of them were traders and many of them went into a second diaspora after the tumult and political upheavals in Africa of the 1960s and 70s. I was particularly impressed by Salim's first experience of the voice of Joan Baez, when a record of hers was played at a party in the academic suburb next to the old town.

Naipaul's extraordinary talent comes through in every flowing sentence and in every well-chosen word. I'm not a great lover of fiction, but this book has enriched my mind. I highly recommend it to readers of serious fiction and to historians alike. I also recommend the travel book North Of South by Shiva Naipaul, the record of a journey through Africa that ties in very well with A Bend In The River.

V.S. Naipaul is one of the most talented modern authors we have. It is a shame that his reputation is often tarnished by those who sense something less than sympathy in his depictions of the postcolonial communities and realities he describes. He can be funny but in the same way any novelist can be funny in describing human situations, if there is satire it is a sympathetic satire as he himself was born into the situation he describes. Naipaul's work describes the often absurd situations that arise when a people no longer have a solid societal structure to rely on, he describes situations where identity and reality are split between two or more cultures. In his early sixties books he does this in a profound and comic way. House for Mr. Biswas is his classic from this period. In the 1970's the realities Naipaul describes no longer are presented comically, rather they reflect the tragedy of the very real conflicts in the world at the time. A Bend in the River is his classic from this period. Guerrillas(1975) is also good though. A Bend in the River(1979) gets a lot of attention because it has so often been compared to Conrad and there is some reason for this most notably being the fact that Naipaul writes in a very clear prose that recalls that lucid minded Englishman who also saw into the heart of the reality of the African situation. This book is very bleak but beautifully written. You will be haunted by some of the images such as the white moths fluttering, symbols of the insecure condition of all life. Naipaul deserves to be appreciated by a wider audience. This book should be on every individuals syllabus who wishes to be aware of the great authors not just of the past but of the present.

A Bend in the River feels like a great novel and it's hard to explain why it isn't. Naipul writes with gravitas and often writes brilliantly. Whole paragraphs are exact, suave and simple. Insights are sharply delivered, characters finely drawn (though more in outline than living relief), and the effect is often like reading a Borges doppelganger, attuned to the nuances of third world geopolitics. But as a novelist (as opposed to a writer), Naipul grasps after a coherent story and fails to deliver. After a thrilling introduction, the protagonist, an Indian merchant in post-independence Zaire, more or less goes about his business, meets the new African elite, has an affair with a European women, ends the affair, visits England, loses his property to Mobutu's nationalization program. It is Graham Greene's turgid pace without Graham Green's plots and without any real sense of the impending danger from Mobutu, who is only clumsily sketched as the 'Big Man.' It is easy to be captivated by Naipul's style, which among other things wonderfully evokes the langorous mood of a town on the Congo, but The Bend in the River is like literary charades, implying masterpiece but without the human relations or plot development to pull off even a decent novel.

This novel is a poignant and psychologically penetrating study of the complex relationship between the personal and the political. At a time when Americans are feeling less insulated from the violence and disruptions of world politics than they have been in decades, "A Bend in the River" is perhaps more topical and relevant than it was when first published. Naipaul tells the story of an Indian in Africa, one of many Asian immigrants who constituted much of the commercial class in the former colonies. With social upheaval comes xenophobia and a man who was pointedly apolitical finds his world unravelling, and ultimately destroyed, by forces that he had failed to acknowledge before it was too late. Unlike the majority of novels that attempt to engage with political themes, "A Bend in the River" is complex and never descends to either travelogue or position paper. Naipaul's characters are believable, and their relationship to the larger world is always personal and individual. Naipaul demonstrates how the concrete facts of individual lives can illuminate the abstractions of politics and power in compelling ways. For those who are only now becoming aware of Naipaul, this book is an excellent place to begin.

I agree with most of the reviews I have read -- Naipaul is one of the finest writers around and would be a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize if he weren't so politically incorrect. I'm writing this review primarily to correct some mistakes made in the other reviews:

The narrator of the novel is not Arab -- he is a Moslem whose family comes from the Indian subcontinent. This is a very important point. It means that the narrator is set apart from every other resident of the city at the bend in the river in a number of ways: (1) he is not Arab and is thus not part of the Arab colonial enterprise which swept across Africa from the East before being driven back by the Europeans; (2) because he is Muslim is also not part of the European colonial ventures which swept across Africa from the West; (3) he is not black so he is not considered "African" even though his family has been in Africa for centuries; (4) because he is Muslim, the narrator has no real connections to the Indian subcontinent -- all such connections were cut off by the Arab invasions and conversions of his ancestors on the Indian subcontinent; and (5) he is from the Eastern coast of Africa and is not part of Central Africa where he finds himself for most of the novel.

By making his narrator Muslim but not Arab, Indian but not Indian, and African but not African, Naipaul cuts him off from every group around him. When the Arabs were forced back by Europe, they had their religion and people to fall back on -- Salim does not -- instead, he and his fellows from the Indian subcontinent attempt to adopt the ways of the West -- even though they are not part of the West and, as Naipaul makes clear, they are not accepted by the West.

In addition, by making his narrator Muslim, Naipaul distances himself from his own narrator -- Naipaul's background is Hindu --and Naipaul also attempts to show the effects of Islam on those from the Indian subcontinent -- the way Islam has cut Muslim Indians off from their own roots (For more on this subject -- see Among the Believers and Beyond Belief by the same author).

I suppose it's inevitable that readers will compare Naipaul's view of the bush to Joseph Conrad's. Naipaul portrays an ancient African civilization coming to grips with the intrusion of modern society thrust by economic boom into its midst. So the merchants and business traders take the steamer up the river to a bend where the New Africa is emerging. However, deep and primitive aggressions always seem to surface perhaps because they are so imbedded into man's warrior instincts. And the New Africa cannot seem to get beyond this to create a society in which peace and justice prevail. The irony is that such qualities exist elsewhere among more advanced societies, as well: society can't seem to transcend its own penchant for violence. Perhaps, that's because beneath the veneer of the human persona there lies a heart of darkness. Mankind's inability to cope with its brutality and baser instincts represent a challenge not only in the bush. It's a universal battle royal that Naipaul's insightful and brilliantly written novel epitomizes. This author should be given serious consideration as a Nobel laureate: his work over a period of decades is worthy of it.