The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief (Borzoi Books) [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

V.S. Naipaul (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 19, 2010 | Series: Borzoi Books

Like all of V. S. Naipaul’s “travel” books, The Masque of Africa encompasses a much larger narrative and purpose: to judge the effects of belief (in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam, the cults of leaders and mythical history) upon the progress of civilization.

From V. S. Naipaul: “For my travel books I travel on a theme. And the theme of The Masque of Africa is African belief. I begin in Uganda, at the center of the continent, do Ghana and Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Gabon, and end at the bottom of the continent, in South Africa. My theme is belief, not political or economical life; and yet at the bottom of the continent the political realities are so overwhelming that they have to be taken into account.
“Perhaps an unspoken aspect of my inquiry was the possibility of the subversion of old Africa by the ways of the outside world. The theme held until I got to the South, when the clash of the two ways of thinking and believing became far too one-sided. The skyscrapers of Johannesburg didn’t rest on sand. The older world of magic felt fragile, but at the same time had an enduring quality. You felt that it would survive any calamity.
“I had expected that over the great size of Africa the practices of magic would significantly vary. But they didn’t. The diviners everywhere wanted to ‘throw the bones’ to read the future, and the idea of ‘energy’ remained a constant, to be tapped into by the ritual sacrifice of body parts. In South Africa body parts, mainly of animals, but also of men and women, made a mixture of ‘battle medicine.’ To witness this, to be given some idea of its power, was to be taken far back to the beginning of things.

“To reach that beginning was the purpose of my book.”

The Masque of Africa is a masterly achievement by one of the world’s keenest observers and one of its greatest writers.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Naipaul’s book about the “nature of African belief” is merely the latest expression of a long-held fascination, previously explored in such books as Among the Believers (1981) and Beyond Belief (1998). Erudite but not scholarly, it could be called a travelogue with dialogue; as he visits or revisits Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, and South Africa, he speaks with a wide range of people, from diplomats and royalty (being a Nobelist grants him greater access than most), to politicians and businessmen, to academics and medicine men. He hears from Christians, Muslims, and those who hold more ancient beliefs. We learn much, particularly how complex and layered these beliefs can be, but more from the speakers than from Naipaul, whose paper-dry narrative style allows for few digressions. He does muse, however, on belief as related to progress, and which beliefs promote or impede progress—though not too much about what constitutes progress. As ever, Naipaul can be prickly, and some offhand observations seem likely to rankle those he’s writing for. In an interesting side note, this book begins in Uganda, where Naipaul first met disgruntled former mentee Paul Theroux, who in Dark Star Safari (2003) retraces his own past in Africa. Naipaul’s safari, though perhaps equally informative, is less rugged and opinionated. And where Theroux rails against Africa’s promise gone unfulfilled, Sir Vidia looks, and listens, and makes few grand pronouncements. --Keir Graff

Review

praise for V. S. Naipaul’s THE MASQUE OF AFRICA
 
“This latest journey to the continent is part of a larger whole, the developing narrative of a single consciousness…. The Masque of Africa marks a startling evolution of that consciousness…. Still writing with the same spare, acerbic lyricism…Naipaul is willing to express a new attitude, one of self-doubt. This acknowledgement of human frailty—starting with his own—broadens his observational powers immeasurably…. [providing] a new capacity for wonderment [and a] new willingness to explore the authenticity of indigenous African belief…. The tone of this, his most recent foray into the search for life’s meaning, is respectful and sometimes even hesitant…. [W]e move from one voice to the next without really noticing that the speaker has changed. There’s not a lot of unnecessary scene-setting: what’s important is what’s being said…. Naipaul has always revealed a curious admixture of extrovert and introvert on the page…. Now…more adept at switching between these two ways of being with less violence…he has found a greater ability to poke fun at himself…. [With this] new kind of humor—one that, being softer, is even sharper [Naipaul] transcends the shadowy wryness to which his readers have long been accustomed…. [His is a] brilliant and elastic mind.”
         Eliza Griswold, The New York Times Book Review
 
“A master still at his craft….Naipaul’s writing [is] simple, concise, engaging…. Like Flaubert and Hemingway, Naipaul uses less to say more, and here he has few equals…. [T]he obscurity of his inquiry makes it fresh…. Naipaul’s latest African journey is eyewitness reporting at its best…. [T]he writing [has] a texture, honestly and ground truth that makes high-minded criticism ring somewhat hollow.”
         Alex Perry, Time Magazine
 
“[Naipaul] is attentive to and gives voice to people, all sorts of people…. In The Masque of Africa, Naipaul uses himself as a character only as a way for us to see others through his conflicts, moods, ears, eyes, and biases. And in between his scenes of sharply observed interactions, we are always surrounded by the people of the continent talking.”
         Binyavanga Wainaina, Boston Globe
 
“Naipaul gets it. He is dry, often irked, sometimes enraged….But he is also patient (not a trait often associated with him), engaged, funny, self-reflective and thoughtful….in writing shorn of excess…he has a wicked way with syntax….The Masque of Africa is a book for outsiders, for those who may never visit Africa or may know it only superficially. But it is also a book in which Africans themselves may find something to learn. Naipaul is a difficult, imperfect narrator who does not care to be liked, but he is an honest one and doesn’t dissemble. Somehow, by the end of it all, and despite his best efforts, I have grown to like him.”
         Aminatta Forna, The Observer (London)
 
“[O]ne of Naipaul’s most stirring books….[he] combines the objectivity of a disaster photographer and an understanding of history.”
         Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent (London)
 
“[Naipaul] provide[s] a narrative order for people to make sense of what has happened to them….His honesty about his failures to connect with people makes us better able to appreciate his breakthroughs. Part of the pleasure of reading him is watching his frustration cool into comprehension….With extraordinary sensitivity, Naipaul registers the beauty of these traditions but also captures their cruelty.”
         Thomas Meaney, Bookforum
 
“This beautiful and humane book is less Olympian than some of Naipaul’s earlier travel narratives, though the idea that underpins it is so basic that it achieves a kind of majesty. Cruelty to animals and to nature will destroy men too. ‘The ground around the abattoir goes on and on. When sights like this meet the eyes…there can be no idea of humanity, no idea of grandeur.’”
         Harper’s Magazine
 
“[A] elegiac spiritual return to a landscape he once inhabited in 1966…. Ever fair-minded, soberly reflective, and conciliatory, Naipaul offers his sage observations in the hope that by learning more, we accept greater.”
         Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)
 
“Naipaul narrates the journey with finely wrought detail, transporting the reader to the landscapes and city scenes he describes. Naipaul is witty, and his writing can be quite charming and delicate. He is also disarmingly frank in his assessments, a quality often not found in discussions of belief…. A sharply written and engrossing exploration of the effects of religious and spiritual belief on societies. Effective both as a vivid piece of travel writing and for its glimpses of belief in Africa.”
         Library Journal
 
“Engaging.”
         Kirkus

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; First Edition edition (October 19, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307270734
• ISBN-13: 978-0307270733
• Product Dimensions: 1 x 6.6 x 9.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #533,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 27 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars An ignoble effort from the Nobel Laureate December 8, 2010

By Rick Skwiot

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I was a sympathetic reader going in. I have read and admired V.S. Naipaul's fiction and nonfiction for decades. I anticipated his newest tome, The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief, enough to pre-order it. But I came away disappointed not only in the book but in the Nobel Prize-winning author as well.

It was bad enough that Naipaul skims the surface here in his investigation of traditional African religion. He seemingly conducted no scholarly research (there is none cited) and interviewed no experts, relying instead on anecdotal evidence taken from literary and political operatives and a few reputed and urbanized holy men, tribal chiefs and witchdoctors. But even then he might have pulled off this disorganized and eclectic travelogue if he had taken the time to actually write some decent prose. But it reads like a first draft, and as Hemingway said, "All first drafts are s***."

Here, for example, is a portion of the Nobel Laureate's account of his visit to the home of former Ghana president Jerry Rawlings:

"The house was well run. No word had been said but, to bridge the gap left by Rawlings and his wife, a well dressed waiter appeared with coffee and fruit juice. I went to the lavatory. I saw the family dogs in two big paved cages at the back of the yard. One cage had small dogs. The other cage had big dogs, a Dalmatian and various hounds, all fine and well exercised and happy. While I watched I saw them fed by a servant who entered the cages with their food. I could have looked at the feeding scene for a long time."

This was the sort paragraph I would love to come across when reading freshman compositions.... I would have its author copy it on the chalkboard and then proceed to instruct the class in basic prose craft: When and how to combine sentences. How to vary sentence structure. Where to add sensory details that make a scene come alive. How to use action verbs instead of flaccid state-of-being verbs like "was" and "had." And then perhaps to talk about larger issues, such as developing a taste for what a reader might find interesting. Thus I would also instruct the Nobel Laureate.

I could cite scores of similar examples in the book, but I have more consideration for my readers than does Naipaul, apparently. Now pushing 80, he drags us from one superficial encounter to another, humorless, tired and at times admittedly frivolous. Driven not by desire to grasp and understand African belief but, seemingly, to fulfill a book contract obligation.

His powers of observation dimmed, he seems rather bored by his subject and the people he meets. Perhaps in part because he meets with the wrong people. Much of his reporting is hearsay rather than direct observation. A lot of talk without much point, and even Naipaul himself often questions the credibility of his sources. But the book is well subtitled, as all we get here are mere glimpses of traditional African religion, and no cohesive and revealing portrait.

However, we do stumble across some fascinating tidbits about Islam in Africa: its practice of polygamy and opposition to the nuclear family, seen as selfish and ruinous to societies; the harsh realities of harem life; the use of Egyptian eunuchs as harem guards. Alas, these are contemporary, not historic accounts, albeit second-hand, as Naipaul was denied access to the harems. Nonetheless, one wishes he had devised a way to interview a eunuch or a concubine. He also reports the horrid yet compelling recent history of Uganda, as well as other African locales.

I suspect that Naipaul's agent and publisher encouraged him to write and publish this book, figuring to earn some fast cash off the venerated author. Had they, instead, been looking out for his legacy and reputation, they would have encouraged him to rework or, better yet, recycle his manuscript. Read more ›

30 of 41 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Mumbo Jumbo Revisited October 23, 2010

By Giordano Bruno

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

In popular parlance, "mumbo jumbo" is a pejorative label for unintelligible technical language and/or for absurd magical blather. It's a useful term for discussing neoliberal economic theories, such as those of assorted Republican contenders for the role of heir-apparent. In V.S. Naipaul's latest travelogue, The Masque of Africa, Mumbo-Jumbo is a specific, recognizable supernatural personage, a vaguely menacing figure reminiscent of the Norse Loki or the Native American Coyote. The book is replete with such intriguingly 'fresh' details, traveler's snapshots of the quaint and curious. If you expect more than traveler's observation, I warn you, you've chosen the wrong book. Naipaul is quite forthright in subtitling his newest book as "GLIMPSES of African Belief." He's not a sociologist, not a historian, not in fact a scholarly writer of any sort; he's an intellectual tourist with an immense talent for turning his glimpses into delightful prose. Occasionally those glimpses are startlingly thought-provoking, but as a traveler, Naipaul is far more adept at asking questions and noticing anomalies than at systematic analyses. That has always been true of his travelogues, though his two books about journeys in Islam were tougher-minded than this book about a jaunt in Africa.

Naipaul makes his agenda plain: "... the theme of The Masque of Africa is African belief. I begin in Uganda, at the center of the continent, do Ghana and Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Gabon, and end at the bottom of the continent in South Africa. My theme is belief, not political or economical life; and yet at the bottom of the continent the political realities are so overwhelming that they have to be taken into account." Whoa, Vidiadhar Sahib, that's quite an itinerary!... It reminds me of the old joke about the American tourist in Europe: if today is Tuesday, this must be Belgium. But Naipaul has no intention of trying to be thorough or comprehensive; much as his writings have always wrestled with issues of 'belief', in Africa he is honestly a kind of bird watcher, peering through his verbal binoculars hither and yon, hoping to spot something randomly significant. Don't suppose that I'm scorning his method here! I relished this book a lot for its literary mastery, and I found it to be a more 'realistic' depiction of Africa as a place, more accurately descriptive than the bulk of books I've read about the continent as I've seen it myself on a few very short visits.

In his chapter about Nigeria, Naipaul writes: "I had a romantic idea of the earth religions. I felt they took us back to the beginning, a philosophical big bang, and I cherished them for that reason. I thought they had a kind of beauty. But the past here still lived. People like the contractor [one of Naipaul's Nigerian informants] were closer to it, and his words ... gave a new idea: the dark abyss of paganism. Others spoke of that as well, in their own way; and it seemed to me that people near the bottom, who responded more instinctively to things, had the greater fear. The fear was real, not affected, and I felt it was this, rather than ideas of beauty and history and culture... that was keeping the past and all the old gods close." Aha! A 'romantic idea' indeed, or else an astonishing naivete for a Nobel Prize winner! But my nose tells me that Naipaul is being disingenuous, setting himself up as his own straw man. He does that a lot in this book. Plays 'straight man' to his own sardonic self. In fact, he invents an image of himself as a casual traveler careful of his health and his budget, almost a knapsack wanderer. Don't fall for that! He's a renowned author of thirty books, including several best sellers. With his royalties and his Nobel winnings, he really doesn't need to be cautious about overpaying a taxi driver. And he doesn't just 'arrive' anywhere unannounced; his contacts are all in place and his introductions come from the highest levels. If he chooses to impress the reader with the risks involved in visiting a slum or a backwoods shrine, it's only for literary effect. He is, please remember, a very famous and recognizable man in his late seventies, and no African government would risk allowing a mishap to him.

So why? Naipaul is a born poseur whose whole career has been based on fictionalizing himself. Whether you find his poses charming or annoying will depend on you. There are honorable people in this world who despise Naipaul's aloof, judgmental objectivity. He has been lambasted by both liberals and conservatives, usually for NOT taking sides. My impression of him is that he cherishes or at least relishes individual human beings but dislikes the species at large. He has made his distaste for the two "world religions" of Islam and Christianity fiercely explicit, a stance not calculated to make him beloved. In his glimpses of Africa, he is obviously disposed to perceive the worst effects of missionary imperialism from either world religion. He declares: "Perhaps an unspoken aspect of my inquiry was the possibility of the subversion of old Africa by the ways of the outside world."

What! Unspoken? More disingenuousness! Isn't it clear, Viadadhar my friend, that you deeply believe Africa would be a happier place if "we" had left it alone? And in that, I wouldn't disagree.

Honestly, Naipaul is far more distressed about the destruction of the forests and the decimation of wildlife than he is about the 'saving of souls' or the dependency of the global economy on African resources. Still, whether you share his values or not, you won't be bored as a reader by his subtle exposition of them.

The title of this book deserves some scrutiny. "Masque" is not a quaint British spelling of "mask", nor a synonym. It's a verb in one sense, meaning 'to wear a mask'. It's also a genre of musical theater, popular in aristocratic circles in 17th C England, an entertainment for the Elite often performed by the Elite themselves. Both senses are pertinent to Naipaul's book. Again and again, as part of his elite itinerary, Naipaul is shown spectacles of African pagan 'superstition' and ritual, some of them in full regalia, staged for him and for more ordinary tourists. And he enjoys the show. I imagine you and I would, also. A large share of the book is devoted to Naipaul's conversations with his informants from various social classes, his drivers, his hotel servants, his hired guides, but also several extremely protected elites, people like Winnie Mandela, Jerry Rawlings, and the presidents of various banks, who would not be accessible except as part of the Masque. Naipaul seldom reveals his stage machinery, seldom discloses how his contacts were prearranged. He's a sly impresario, this masquer from Trinidad!

I don't imagine that everyone will be satisfied with Naipaul's stance in this book. Those with the most earnest humanitarian concerns and those with the staunchest political opinions will probably accuse him of dilettantish trivialization. Let me say it plainly: this is an entertainment, a masque as artificial as Henry Purcell's "Fairy Queen". If it also stimulates insights, that's "valued added". Read more ›

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, opinionated and sketchy but compelling and worrying. March 19, 2011

By Kathleen Casey

Format:Hardcover

All the above reviewers have more opinions about V.S. Naipaul'a Nobel, writing, the editing of this book, the author's integrity, intelligience and knowledge than I.

I read the book non stop in two days. My overall impression was that Africa was hot and dirty and impossible. Naipaul conveyed the belief that animism never leaves the African soul, no matter how educted the brain, and that the reason Christianity accomplished inroads was its similiar belief in the power of spirits. Whether either point is true, others will have to say.

I liked the brief portrait of Winnie Mandela, a woman who has been much scorned and vilified. It gave me a different opinion of her, a positive change. And, it reaffirmed my thoughts about Bishop Tutu.

Most interestingly, Naipaul speaks to the destruction of a *legacy* by the commericalization of a leader's image. Listen up, Reaganites!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars On the Road Again September 4, 2012

By Eric Maroney

Format:Hardcover

V.S. Naipaul is 80, and in The Masque of Africa, tries his hand at some of his most successful kind of work, that of the travel writer. Here, Naipaul returns to African countries he visited twenty-five years ago or more, and records his impressions of the changes that have occurred . This being Naipaul, most of those impressions are negative. Part is Naipaul, and part is the appalling conditions of modern day Africa.

Interestingly, his observations about Africa are far tamer that his past utterances about the developing world. An older Naipaul, who every now and again in the book refers to difficulty walking and poor health, has perhaps become slightly gentler in his approach to the world. But don't expect too much. Naipaul is still an acute observer of the what he perceives as cultural and personal shortcomings, and has an acid pen.

This is certainly not his strongest travel piece. But for fans of Naipaul, it must be read.