An ethnic Indian born and raised on the coast of Africa moves inland to run a store at a town in the bend of the river. From this vantage, we see the struggle of post-colonial Africa to establish a viable state, amidst the tribal and economic pressures of the time. Mobutu is never named but the history is clear.

The main character is curiously passive, as are many of the people around him. They wait through uprisings and prosperity, the hope of progress and the increasingly anarchic shadow of the 'big man'.

Salim, an Indian man living on the East Coast of Africa, sets out to make a life at a small village at a bend in the river in the interior of Africa. He arrives there, following the old slave trails, shortly after the town has won its independence in 1963. The town is in shambles with a poor economy and hardly enough food to feed its people. Yet, Salim stays and builds a business. He is joined by a family servant named Metty and befriends a couple named Shoba and Mahesh. He also attempts to mentor a bush woman’s young son, Ferdinand. As the years roll by, the new President of this nation dumps money into building a University and “domain” where the rich white people live. In the background are always the soldiers and rumblings of war. Salim has a briefly passionate yet violent affair with a white married woman, and at one point is arrested for dealing in black market ivory.

V.S. Naipaul’s book A Bend in the River is perhaps one of the more depressing books I’ve read. Although the town is never named, it is most likely set in Zaire (currently the Democratic Republic of the Congo) during the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time there was a great deal of social and political upheaval and violence. Naipaul’s protagonist, Salim, narrates the novel and spends much of his time philosophizing about the role of women in relationships, the political and military climate of the region, his own lack of direction, and the difference between modernized people and the bush people. The problem with this internalized dialogue was that I never felt connected to any of the characters. It was as though Salim was merely telling us his tale (with very little plot).

The themes of A Bend in the River include the view of the outsider (foreigner) vs. the insider, and African rage in response to colonialism. When a mild-mannered priest who is teaching in the town (and has created a museum of bush and tribal mementos) is brutally murdered and decapitated, the townspeople barely cease their every day routines in order to pull his mangled body from the river. Naipaul uses the river and its floating heaps of water hyacinths as symbols of the relentless changes moving through Africa.

Always sailing up from the south, from beyond the bend in the river, were clumps of water hyacinths, dark floating islands on the dark river, bobbing over the rapids. It was as if rain and river were tearing away bush from the heart of the continent and floating it down to the ocean, incalculable miles away. But the water hyacinth was the fruit of the river alone. The tall lilac-coloured flower had appeared only a few years before, and in the local language there was no word for it. The people still called it “the new thing” or “the new thing in the river,” and to them it was another enemy. – from A Bend in the River, page 46 -

This was my first V. S. Naipaul novel – and I had hoped to love it. Instead I found myself growing bored with Salim’s theorizing. The book crawls at a snail’s pace. It is perhaps the longest short novel I have ever read. I also did not appreciate the negative characterization of all the women in the book. Salim (and nearly all the men in the book) frequent the brothels, and Salim at one point theorizes: But if women weren’t stupid, the world wouldn’t go round (from page 186). He later brutally attacks and beats his mistress whose response is to climb into bed and open her legs to him. The one seemingly normal relationship between Mahesh and Shoba is harshly criticized by Salim.

Mahesh was my friend. But I thought of him as a man who had been stunted by his relationship with Shoba. That had been achievement enough for him. Shoba admired him and needed him, and he was therefore content with himself, content with the person she admired. His only wish seemed to be to take care of this person. He dressed for her, preserved his looks for her. I used to think that when Mahesh considered himself physically he didn’t compare himself with other men, or judge himself according to some masculine ideal, but saw only the body that please Shoba. He saw himself as his woman saw him; and that was why, though he was my friend, I thought that his devotion to Shoba had made him half a man, and ignoble. – from A Bend in the River, page 197 -

So, I guess, according to Naipaul’s protagonist … a man cannot be a man and be devoted to the woman he loves. Huh? Maybe I should not have been surprised to read this from Wikipedia:

Naipaul credits an extramarital affair for giving A Bend in the River and his later books greater fluidity, saying these “in a way to some extent depend on her (i.e., his mistress). They stopped being dry.”

If you haven’t guessed it by now, I am not going to recommend A Bend in the River. Scholars have credited this book with being one of the books to read about Africa. I would argue that a novel which has little plot, little story, reads like a tedious monologue from a textbook, and insults women is not one too many readers want to waste their time on. My recommendation for an amazing novel set in the Congo would be The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (read my review).

Naipaul won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 and was short listed for the Booker Prize for A Bend in the River in 1979, but he’s not getting any awards from me! ( )

The protagonist is an Indian muslim, therefore separate from the drama playing out between the Whites leaving a newly independent African country and the Blacks taking over. The book is steeped in pessimism, with the figure of Africa almost as important as the main character, Salim. If the Whites expected to leave behind their idea of a socitey and state and civilisation, how mistaken they were. How ambitious to believe that they could carve up the continent in straight lines, ignoring the cultural, linguistic and tribal loyalties, which was the default position of these communities. What arrogance to imagine that their rule of hundred odd years could wipe out Africa's primordial heritage. The book shows this newly independent country regressing, darkening into the blackness of the bush, into the redness of marxism as well as blood. ( )

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. ( )

Book about an Indian Muslim living in Africa when the nationals begin to rebel and take back their country. Story of a displaced person. Okay. ( )