Naipaul, V.S. "A Bend in the River: His Great Novel of Africa"

 1979

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read


 Salim, an African of Indian descent, settles in an unnamed town at the bend in the river as a shopkeeper. With his “foreign” eyes we see part of Africa's history after the colonists left, the changes both in politics and the community, the problems with the economy, the war-like situations. The changes for the local community as well as for the outsiders like Salim who never really truly belong. As an expatriate myself, I can fully understand the problems he encounters, even though they are different from country to country.

Another highly interesting novel by this author who truly deserved the Nobel prize he received.

From the back cover:

"In the 'brilliant novel' (The New York Times) V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man - an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions."

I also read "A House for Mr. Biswas" and "Half a Life".

V.S. Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories" and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for "A Bend in the River: His Great Novel of Africa" in 1979.


Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

Naipaul, V.S. "Half A Life"

2001

Reviewed by Marianne
from Let's Read



 

After reading "A House for Mr. Biswas", I just had to read more by this wonderful writer. This novel takes place in a lot of different parts of this world, India, Africa, Europe.


A privileged son leaves his home and goes abroad to live a poor life. An interesting take on life in different settings. A lot of information about post-independence India, Africa and Europe during that time, a comparison, a view about completely different cultures and lifestyles. Brilliant read, often called the author's best novel.

From the back cover:

"In a narrative that moves with dreamlike swiftness from India to England to Africa, Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul has produced his finest novel to date, a bleakly resonant study of the fraudulent bargains that make up an identity.

The son of a Brahmin ascetic and his lower-caste wife, Willie Chandran grows up sensing the hollowness at the core of his father's self-denial and vowing to live more authentically. That search takes him to the immigrant and literary bohemias of 1950s London, to a facile and unsatisfying career as a writer, and at last to a decaying Portugese colony in East Africa, where he finds a happiness he will then be compelled to betray. Brilliantly orchestrated, at once elegiac and devastating in its portraits of colonial grandeur and pretension, Half a Life represents the pinnacle of Naipaul's career."

Apparently, there is a sequel called "Magic Seeds" which I still have to read. I did read "A Bend in the River" in the meantime and really loved it, as well.

V.S. Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".
 

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.  

Original Post on "Let's Read".

A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul

Originally reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

on Edith's Miscellany

Freedom, independence and self-determination are values that we hold high in esteem in our modern western-style democracies, but to gain as well as to keep them often had and sometimes still has a high price. In the name of freedom many wars have been fought and many people have been killed everywhere on this planet, notably in Africa. Unfortunately, to throw out foreign rulers and chase away home-bred tyrants has seldom been enough because what followed far too often was a ferocious and violent struggle for power between opposing political or/and social groups. In the novel A Bend in the River by V. S. Naipaul, the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2001, a young Indian-Muslim shopkeeper who came from the East Coast to an unspecified country at the heart of Africa to make his fortune gives testimony of the chaos after independence that made possible the rise of the “Big Man”.

A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul

1961
 
Reviewed by Marianne from "Let's Read"

“’A House for Mr. Biswas’ portrays through a series of homes he had and fairly brief life of a poor Indian journalist turned civil servant in Port of Spain, Trinidad, in the years before and after World War II.”

I love V.S. Naipaul. He is a wonderful writer. Not only does he tell us about a life we would never be able to look into, but he does it in such an excellent way.

A man has a dream and he works for it. Not always easy. A lot of struggles. The more he tries to achieve his goals, the further away he seems to get.

A story about disappointments in life and shattered dreams, written in an exquisite way. I loved this book.

Apparently a novel with a large autobiographical background. The main character, Mr. Biswas who is based on the author's own father, is not a very likeable character, he is conceited, thinks very highly of himself and not a lot of others. Yet, with of V.S. Naipaul's wonderful use of language, the story is as beautiful as if he was talking about a beautiful and lovely princess. And even though the protagonist is not sympathetic, we can only feel sorry for those born into a certain life who have to follow the path described to them long before they were even here on earth. It does make you wonder, though, how good the relationship between V.S. Naipaul and his father was.

When following Mr. Biswas, we get an insight into the colonialism and the struggle of the natives to get out of it. We also live with the family and can get to know their day-to-day life and how a huge amount of people try to get on with each other in a crowded space.

A very complex story with a lot of subplots and minor characters that add to the fullness of this tale. It will become a true classic.

From the back cover: "The early masterpiece of V. S. Naipaul’s brilliant career, 'A House for Mr. Biswas' is an unforgettable story inspired by Naipaul's father that has been hailed as one of the twentieth century's finest novels.

In his forty-six short years, Mr. Mohun Biswas has been fighting against destiny to achieve some semblance of independence, only to face a lifetime of calamity. Shuttled from one residence to another after the drowning death of his father, for which he is inadvertently responsible, Mr. Biswas yearns for a place he can call home. But when he marries into the domineering Tulsi family on whom he indignantly becomes dependent, Mr. Biswas embarks on an arduous–and endless–struggle to weaken their hold over him and purchase a house of his own. A heartrending, dark comedy of manners, 'A House for Mr. Biswas' masterfully evokes a man’s quest for autonomy against an emblematic post-colonial canvas."

V.S. Naipaul received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 "for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories".

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

It’s hard to imagine what effect this book might have had when it won the Booker Prize in 1971.  The Booker was less well-known then, and it may not have had much impact on the reading public.  If a mass audience did know about it, what did they make of it, then, at the end of the Swinging Sixties, after decades of post-colonial independence movements and those endless famines in Africa?
It’s not just this book’s theme which might have intrigued the reader: the ambiguities of the exploiter and the exploited; the indifferent racism; the incipient violence; the political instability – all set in the vast beauty of Africa and its dust, dirt and disease.  It’s also the strange structure of the book.  It’s in five discrete parts, though it’s not a collection of short stories.  There’s the main story, ‘In A Free State’, preceded by ‘Tell Me Who To Kill’, in which an African goes to London to support his brother’s education.   He makes money but loses it in a failed business for which he has neither skills nor understanding of the rules governing health and safety, and resigns himself to a life so dislocated from friends, family and community that he can no longer even feel the rage he ought to feel.  As the title says, who can he kill to avenge himself for these losses?  Brother has exploited brother, he has been ripped off by the man who sold him a business he couldn’t run, and vandalism and violence is everywhere.  The situation into which he so naively ventured is too overwhelming, and he is powerless even to identify the acts perpetrated by both institutions and individuals that have ruined his life, much less exact revenge.

I read and blogged this book on December 30th, 2008.  To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/in-a-free-state-by-vs-naipaul/

A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul

Nobody’s going anywhere. We’re all going to hell, and every man knows this is in his bones. We’re being killed. Nothing has any meaning. That is why everyone is so frantic. Everyone wasn’t to make his money and run away. But where? That is what is driving people mad. They feel they’re losing the place they can run back to. – from A Bend in the River, page 272

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!

In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul (Laura)

In a Free StateV.S. Naipaul
246 pages

In a Free State is a collection of short stories -- one more of a novella -- about expatriates living outside their home country. Naipaul has a good vantage point, being somewhat of a "wanderer" himself: of Indian descent, born in Trinidad, and living most of his life in England. He is well positioned to lay bare the perceived glamour of far-off lands. However, this book did nothing for me. Nothing, nada, zilch. The characters were largely unlikeable. They were mostly male, and his female characters were appallingly shallow. And then I found it impossible to get past Naipaul's misogynist history, having psychologically abused his wife for many, many years. It's disappointing to read a Booker prize-winner, from a Nobel prizewinning author, and have it fall so flat.

This may be my shortest review ever, but there's really nothing more I have to say. ( )

My original review can be found here.