A Bend in the River

Rating:
Summary: Good epic, Although a bit detached.
Review: I suggest readers make a comparative read about "Big River Bend" and "Poisonwood Bible". Both books set the scenes in the Congo around the same time, but the atmosphere they carry are totally different.

I love both books, although the "Big river bend" is a bit detached. For example: I cannot comprehend(or accept) the scene in the jail: Even our protagonist was held in jail, he still could observe others with his cold eyes. Such a feeling prevails the whole book, hence sometimes makes the book unreal and contrived.

However, the writing skill and the ability of telling story of Naipaul is incomparable. You can easily be drawn in his world.

Rating:
Summary: An unsentimental blend of political and personal stories
Review: Personal and political scenarios are beautifully interwoven, in a pessimistic style only Nobel Prize laureate V.S. Naipaul is capable of constructing, in his haunting novel A Bend in the River.

The novel seems in great part autobiographical; while Naipaul himself was born in Trinidad as the son of Indian immigrants, the protagonist, Salim, also an Indian, was born in post-colonial Africa. The African nation the novel is set in is illustrated in lengthy descriptions of what the reader can assume to be the author's own observations during his travels to Africa - from "the repair yards with open corrugated-iron sheds full of rusting pieces of machinery" to the food stalls full of "little oily heaps of fried flying ants (expensive, and sold by the spoonful) laid out on scraps of newspaper; hairy orange-colored caterpillars with protuberant eyes wriggling in enamel basins; fat white grubs kept moist and soft in little bags of damp earth, five or six grubs to a bag..."

Just as Naipaul had been during his travels to such lands, Salim is merely an observer, indifferent to all that goes on around him. The lack of sentiment throughout the novel was shocking, almost frightening, and often exaggerated to an unexplained unrealism. When Salim, originally a shop-owner, is degraded to a manager and chauffeur to an uneducated local given authority over the shop, he does not complain at all, merely telling his servant Metty "it will be over soon." His sudden beating of the woman he had been having an affair with was also unexplained and annoyingly confusing, especially in the cold, dry tone the narrator maintains throughout the entire novel; acting as nothing more than a neutral witness when in reality he is often the cause of the acts of sentiment he observes without a change in his flat tone of voice: "...I used my foot on her then, doing that for the sake of the beauty of her shoes, her ankles, the skirt I had watched her raise, the hump of her hip. She turned her face to the floor and remained still for a while; then with a deep breath such as a child draws before it screams, she began to cry, and that wail after a time broke into real, shocking sobs. And it was like that in the room for many minutes."

The lack of sentimental bias, however, gives the reader more factual aspects of the political ongoings in the background of the story. Although the reader may assume the setting to be in present-day Congo, the author never names the nation nor the dictator, whom he simply calls the "Big Man," and the story may just as well be set in Milosevic's Yugoslavia or Pol Pot's Cambodia. Salim indifferently notes the lack of electricity and the sound of gunshots during the local rebellion "the President's white men" put down, the presence of Youth Guard officers in town, the pictures of the Big Man hung in every restaurant, the sudden increase of foreign intellectuals invited to the State Domain, the "boom" that keeps his business going, the success of his friend's burger restaurant. Even as his property is confiscated in a sudden social upheaval, even as he is arrested, Salim maintains the coldness of his tone and continues to describe all he sees around him. It is interesting how the "Big Man" plays such an important role in the story despite the fact the narrator never meets him personally. He is brilliantly characterized indirectly through such intricately woven details such as the tales of his mother complex and the shrines he builds for her, the switch in language he makes in his speeches, the clothes he chooses to be photographed in, the staff he carries, and his betrayal of Raymond and others he no longer needs.
Naipaul makes his theme of isolation from the very first sentence of the book: "the world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." Salim is an isolated man, foreigner to the continent his family has lived in for generations, likely to be considered African in India, and clearly not accepted by Westerners. But isolated as he is, the effects of the political disorder in the world around him still affect him. Naipaul's beautifully disturbing scenes - the thousands of moths in the air, "white in the white light" - catch glimpses of the rise and fall of the Big Man's fragile empire and the stories of each lost person caught in the whirlpool. Things are forever changing in this land, the people will come and go, and the only river that runs through it will flow amidst the chaos as it always has.

Rating:
Summary: Men Without A Country
Review: _A Bend In The River_ is Nobel Prize winner V.S. Naipaul's effective, if at times ponderously written, study of major disruptions faced by non-black inhabitants of post-Colonial Congo. Naipaul tells his story from the perspective of Salim, a Muslim shopkeeper, whose family emigrated to the Congo from the east coast of Africa many years before. Under the radicalization program of the "Big Man," Salim's business is confiscated and placed into the hands of a semi-illiterate, womanizing, drunkard. Salim's position is reduced to manager and part-time chauffeur to the new owner.

Among those caught up in the "revolution" are Salim's European friends, Reginald and his wife, Yvette. Formerly in an important position of influence with the African "Big Man," Reginald suddenly becomes a persona non grata. In addition, many non-indigenous people are forced to flee their beloved adopted land after threats of arrest and possible bodily harm.

Naipaul has received criticism for racism for allegedly siding with the former European colonialists and in his negative portrayals of the native Africans. On the surface Naipaul may appear to be somewhat one-sided in the book by not touching on any civil rights abuses the Europeans may have previously perpetrated against native Africans. The only evidence of subjugation Naipaul mentions in the book is of Africans having in the past to address European colonialists as "monsieur" or "madam." In fairness to the author, it must be recognized that _A Bend In The River_ is a work of fiction told from the standpoint of a recently disenfrancised Muslim, whose post-colonial experiences would necessarily embitter him and cause his feelings to be skewed. Naipaul has, after all, not pretended to have written a non-fiction record akin to the history of British India, or of pre-Pol Pot Cambodia, or of post-Tito Yugoslavia in which the atrocities of the previous eras should and must be balanced against those of contemporary times.

Rating:
Summary: Political travalogue
Review: "A Bend in the River" reminded me of a travelogue: heavy on description, light on feeling. While the prose flowed and the pages flew by, I felt too much the politics and the semi-autobiographical style to feel strongly about the characters or the events.

Despite the coldness of the book, Naipul manages to draw his readers into the setting. Paying special attention to detail - the narrator's description of his flat, for example - Naipul paints a full picture of the African town at the bend of the river.

But there are too many passages of direct exposition, too many instances of characters unexpectedly changing their nature, too much that happens without explanation for this to be considered a great novel. For example, the narrator in one absurd scene beats up his mistress in his bedroom. We're not sure why, and we're apparently supposed to sympathize with aggressor. It's not a case of an unreliable narrator, because there is no other evidence of such in the book, and it seems sloppy plotting.

In a recent issue of "The New York Review of Books," South African author, J.M. Coetzee likened V.S. Naipul's attitude towards Africa to Conrad's in the "The Heart of Darkness." I was reading "A Bend in the River" at the time, and that statement struck me with the force of insight. How true that is! There's a sense of alieness and horror in Naipul's description of Africa that easily matches Conrad's. In both "Bend in the River" and "Heart of Darkness," the narrators live in fear of the awesome primal power found in "the bush," where primitive tribes live in the same manner as they have for centuries, and who are capable of random and barbaric acts of horror. In both books, a brutal strongman (Kurz and The President) is required to tame the bush or to direct its energies. And in both books, a foreigner lives in fear at the borders of horror.

Somehow, then, "A Bend in the River" fails to unearth any new emotions we non-Africans can feel towards the continent. In that way, it is a letdown, too. What's missing is a discussion of the bush from the bush's point of view.

Rating:
Summary: A Bend in the River
Review: The book made grand statements about modern Africa and the human condition by an important and talented writer. It's structure seemed to lack cohesion, though. I particularly didn't understand Salim's relationships with the women, particularly Yvette. His brutal beating of her seemed inexplicable.

Salim's other relationships were excellently rendered, particularly Mahesh and his wife, Metty, Ferdinand, and Indar. Each contributed to the explanation of his isolation.

Rating:
Summary: Without a home
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: here's for you, P money
Review: Ok, A Bend In The River is really, really bad. The first hundred pages were like root canal. Anyway, it's about this Indian ( from India) Muslim named Salim, who is living in tribal Africa in the 1970s. This is an especially volatile time in African history, because all kinds of wars and revolutions are going on constantly. The British colonists used to prevent the tribal warfare, but they left after world war two. Now, by the 70s, the waring tribes have started up again, and there's no one there to stop it. Salim originally came to coastal Africa. He lived well, and had a big house and two families of servants. He was a very rich and repected foreigner by African standards. But when the war came, he went into interior Africa, to this tiny town at a bend in the river. He left behind his money and his big house, and is making a simple living, selling pots and pans and stuff to the natives. Eventually he is joined by a servant of his family, named Ali, who followed him into interior africa. Ali is renamed Metty by the villagers, and becomes sociable and outgoing. Salim likes him like a son. Zabeth is the village's magic woman. She buys her ingredients for her spells from Salim's store, and he eventually comes to know her. She has a son named Ferdinand, who she entrusts to Salim for his education. She wants him to grow up and travel the world, not live forever in backwards africa. Salim takes him in, and Metty and Ferdinand become friends. Salim does not like Ferdinand, however, because his is not mindful of Salim's authority. Ferdinand enrolls in a lycee (school) run by french missionaries, and eventually decides that he wants to go to college in america. Salim won't pay for him to go, though, cuz he hates him. Ferdinand responds by turning to delinquency, stealing stuff. This pisses Salim off even more. The wars continue to rage, and the ever-increasing schism between Salim and Fardinand is paralleled by the war growing ever-closer to the town. eventually, salim is woken up one morning by gunfire in the distance. He puts all his valuables in a box and buries it, steeling himself fr the worst. Thats the 1st hundred, the sedond should be done friday.

Rating:
Summary: high point in Naipal's career
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Novel
Review: 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).

Rating:
Summary: the magic of Africa: a magnificent piece of writing
Review: Clear yet so rich:

Having lived in africa for a short while, I can tell you that this book captures very realistic images and emotions of central Africa.

A bit depressing towards the end though.