Rating: 
Summary: Suceeds at giving us at least one perspective
Review: I've read a bunch of the reviews, so I'll try not to repeat much of anything. There wasn't so much of the narrative I was expecting/wanting, but that's ok, because eventually I realized what he was writing this for, and even though I grew up in Africa, I felt like he churned up all I knew and helped me consider some things in new ways. This is not all of Africa, but Naipaul doesn't see it that way, so he shouldn't be criticized for revealing only a sliver of the pie. I do believe it gives a comprehensive perspective--while there are many others, you do gain great insight into the one he shows us. He's just pessimistic, and that may be hard for some to get past, but the truth is that plenty of people think the way his characters do, and I think that a lot can be learned from wading through his novel. And remember--don't assume a writer's views are exactly what he writes down.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to read, but excellent
Review: I read this book for a book club that I am involved in and I must say that I did not want to. I had heard and read a few things about him and his speeches/opinions that I did not like. Regardless, I read this book. All through reading, I was mad, upset, negative, and in general felt the book was just mean in spirit. I went to my book club to unleash this negative energy on the person that had us read it, but ended up keeping my mouth shut. Interesting idea that an author might want to inspire such feelings to drive a point home. After talking about it for a couple of hours and listening to other points of view, I found that this book did its job well. It is well written and fantastic imagery, it makes you mad, frustrated, and that is the point. A hard topic to read and a hard piece of history to swallow, but needed to understand the state of affairs in Africa.
Opening my eyes to this makes me respect the author for doing a great job.
Rating: 
Summary: A worn out view of Africa
Review: As several reviewers have noted, A Bend in the River is Naipaul's version of the infamous "Heart of Darkness" of that Polish renegade - Conrad. Conrad reportedly said that his language "Polish" was not enough for him to write a grand work. Both are works about the confused selves of the authors than about anything else. Conrad torn about his adopted English self and that of the rejected Polish self; and Naipaul about his south Indian roots and his desire to escape that through being more English than the English and casting a bone at Africans. Several reviewers have opined that Naipaul writes uncomfortable truths. What uncomfortable truths? When it comes to portraying realism of African conditions, no one comes close to African writers themselves. And yet there is never gratuitous mockery of themselves in their works. I do not think Conrad or Naipaul have anything to do with Africa. What they bring to the surface of their art is what exists in the dark corners of their own minds. This is why it is so comical to me to read several reviews praising Naipaul "truths" or "politically incorrect stance". May be "truth telling" and "courageous political incorrectness" have become the "étendard" of those willing to vilify and mock Africans "à souhait". To me, Naipaul and Conrad are similar in the sense that they are torn between two sides: on one side is everything they are trying to distance themselves from (Polish and Slavic origins, culture, etc.; and Indian-Caribbean origin, culture, etc.) and on the other side is the English culture, the dominant culture. The first original side is portrayed as the dark side and they are running away from it, while the latter side is portrayed as good. Africa is just an allegory for this first side. Conrad might be said to have almost succeeded in his quest for Englishness - probably being white giving him a hand; he retired into that class of English gentry of the tea and the garden (I am wondering if at those inevitable tea parties anyone suspected his modest Polish origins). As for Naipaul, if only he could rub off the dark skin he would be at par with Conrad.The question remains and is why non-African writers serially understand and articulate a particular view of Africa and Africans. As Chinua Achebe puts it, "It is a great irony of history and geography that Africa, whose land mass is closer than any other to the mainland of Europe, should come to occupy in European psychological disposition the farthest point of otherness, should indeed become Europe's very antithesis." One should note that Africa's otherness in European/western fiction started as a deliberate invention intended to rationalize first the trans-Atlantic slave trade and subsequently the imperial domination by Europe. Since then Western/European writing has continued to be judgmental as well as derogatory. Africa is seen to be everything that Europe/the west is not! It is not that Western novelists just chose to engage in fanciful writing about Africa and Africans. They see themselves as the very antithesis of their subject. Indeed, reading Conrad, Naipaul and company one cannot but wonder whether these novelists consider Africans to be a part of humanity. At least Hegel was courageous enough to say outright that Africa was outside of mainstream history. The sad thing is the "otherness" of Africans is so enshrined in popular as well as scholarly western imagination than no one even questions this dogma anymore. It may be worthwhile to remember that the process of vilification of Africans began long before the novel and/or European slavery. It is apparent in the imagined creatures reported by Greek and Roman historians and travelers. It continues in the fanciful literature penned by early European travelers who made-up reports, out of thin air, of the strange peoples of Africa. And, perhaps most importantly in cultural terms, it is apparent in the Bible and the way that Europeans came to read the stories that produced the Hamitic myth as well as the Song of Solomon. So Conrad and our contemporaries such as Naipaul are playing in a well-worn cultural field.
Rating: 
Summary: Because the personal is political...
Review: A young Indian man, a Muslim, decides to leave the family compound on the African coast and travel inland, having purchased a small shop in a village. Struggling for a definition of himself, and sensing impending vast changes, he dreams of success, hoping to avoid the civil war that has spread along the coast. The Europeans have left their mark on post-colonial Africa and all of Salim's ideas have been dictated by European values. Salim moves through the shabby streets of his new village, carefully assessing everything, as is his way. Eventually, his decisions, often foolish and impulsive, find him mired in the same corrupt bureaucracy and confusion, avarice and fear that grip the rest of Africa. Formerly burdened with a surfeit of time to make decisions for the future, suddenly, there is no more time, and understanding the confluence of events becomes critical to survival. The ebb and flow of daily life, the fears of a town hearing distant sounds of battle, create an awareness of the incipient brutality. Naipaul's prose is full of discovery, constantly enlarging and changing the world. Precise and impeccable descriptions scorch the mind with their truth, humanity viewed through unflinching eyes. The life that once seemed so intractable is at once as changeable as the flow of the river and emerging politics of a country caught between the old and rapidly evolving new. There is confusion on a scale possible in third world countries, inexorable movement toward inevitable cataclysm. The fine tremor of tragedy vibrates through the most trivial of days: something momentous hovers on the horizon. Finally, there is no structure, and the little civilized behavior remaining begins to collapse. Greed and fear join forces as desperate men reel about, searching for escape, knowing they are trapped in the history of a violently evolving nation. Salim is frantic, one step ahead of oblivion; the suspense is unbearable. A Bend in the River is larger than life, terrifying in import and a magnificent accomplishment.
Rating:
Summary: A Bend in the River=Zimbabwe
Review: Naipaul's book, about an Indian merchant in an African country that's political situation is slowly and implacably worsening, reminds one of the current situation in Zimbabwe: Race baiting, colonial guilt, inept leaders - like many of Naipaul's books, it's all here. Naipaul's topic runs close to the grain of the uncomfortable topics that sometimes lead to accusations of racism, a label that Naipaul has suffered. If he appears to be without sympathy for the state of many post-colonial societies (especially post-colonial African societies), he has great sympathy for the individuals in those places, not just those who were colonized, but those who did the colonizing too. The comic aspects of Naipaul's writing (of which there is precious little in "A Bend of the River") belie the deep rift that is the legacy of European colonization.
Rating:
Summary: ¤jªeÆW¤º®e±'°Q
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Rating: 
Summary: My first, and perhaps my last, Naipaul
Review: Salim travels and returns to the city at the bend in the river. He ignores the good advice of those who have lived there and moved on, he ignores the clear signs that he should cut his losses and get out. He seems detached from everyone, even his mentor, even his lover. In the process, a different perspective of a developing African state is revealed to the reader. One senses the hopelessness conveyed by Salim's passionless actions, a habit of his Muslim family ancestry, who do not change with the times. His relationship with Metty, his servant, seems mutually condescending as is their tradition. His relationship with Ferdinand, the son of one of his most intriguing trading customers, is ultimately and unpredictably uplifitng. So there is much to learn from this novel, if not much to enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Hard to finish
Review: Set sometime, somewhere in Africa this tells the story of third generation Indian immigrants in Africa and post-colonialism when the blacks in many areas rebelled and expelled all "others". I read this book because I am interested in the African diaspora, but found this book difficult to get through because the style is so detached, almost a documentary in the first person, however the subject matter is quite interesting and reveals a world I was not aware of from anything else I've read.
Rating:
Summary: Naipaul¿s other Masterpiece
Review: Published in 1979, A Bend in the River tells the story of an unnamed town in an unnamed African country. The town is situated on a bend in the river upon which all trade and travelers must pass. Salim is a Muslim of Indian descent who has come to this town in the center of Africa to take over a business abandoned by a family friend. Salim comes from a family of Indian Muslim traders that have lived and prospered on Africa's east coast for centuries. He is not an African despite his family's many generations of living in Africa. He makes a dangerous journey by car from the coast inland negotiating his way past rutted roads and corrupt border officials and thieving soldiers. He reaches the town and slowly builds up his business, selling cheap imported goods to the natives. The town has just come through a bloody period of civil war with much of the town destroyed. Slowly, over years, peace returns. Salim and the town prosper. It's all just a temporary lull between civil wars as the cycle of violence begins again tearing Salim's tranquil existence apart. Naipaul has a very pessimistic view about Africa. European-imposed modernity and the trappings of civilization are illusory and ephemeral. All that is real is the jungle and the untamed people. The novel is written in matter-of-fact understated style that is quite true to life. The intermittent civil wars and bloody violence are the real normal state of society. Salim is not a classic literary hero, he's just trying to survive and has no long range goals or lofty motivation. He is buffeted by the new civil war that finally touches the town after building up in the background. At the end his business is confiscated. His former employee, the lazy and worthless "Citoyen Theotime," is appointed the new owner of the business. Theotime is an illiterate native who spends his workday looking at comic books. Salim is reduced to chauffeuring Theotime around in his own car. Everything he has worked for more than a decade is lost. In the end he's arrested on smuggling charges and is lucky to escape with his life
Rating:
Summary: A continent of change
Review: V.S. Naipaul's "A Bend in the River" is the story of the transformation of a Third World nation from old to new, a sort of rebirth. It is narrated by an Indian man named Salim who grew up among many Indians, Arabs, and Europeans on the coast of an east African nation under European colonization. When the nation gains its independence during a violent upheaval, Salim moves to the country's interior to a remote town on the bend of a major river where he buys a shop and establishes a business amidst the ruins of the old European civilization. The town gradually grows, thrives, and modernizes due to the knowledge, skills, and initiative among the various residents. One of Salim's friends, for example, is a fountain of entrepreneurial ideas and finally hits pay dirt with a fast-food franchise called Bigburger. One of the European holdovers is a priest named Father Huismans who runs a school and loves Africa for the beauty of its native cultures. Hotels, nightclubs, and a university spring up as a new multicultural civilization develops. The nation's new president is known only as the Big Man. He was an idealistic youth who had as a mentor a white European man named Raymond, a history professor who specializes in Africa. The Big Man eventually decides to turn the increasingly corrupt nation into an African socialist regime, seizing the businesses of all the foreigners and turning them over to the natives; Salim, as a non-African African, is thus consigned to the fate of the dispossessed. Like his wealthy Indian friend Indar, Salim finds out how easily a man can lose not just his home but his country. Africa, although the second largest continent in area, has been the underdog of the world throughout history, ravaged for centuries by European invasion and intrusion to the point where all its European economic, political, and religious influences cannot simply be abandoned in its efforts to preserve its cultural heritage and traditions. This novel is a fitting tribute to that theme.
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