Naipaul died recently. His rather un-PC views and abrasive personality in London literary circles attracted significant criticism and gave him something of a Marmite factor. This classic was one that always drew me in with its beguiling title. The main character comes from a group of people scarcely ever mentioned in literature, the Indian community of East Africa. Salim is a gloomy, unambitious shop-owner who moves inland (although the location is unnamed, we can assume his birthplace is somewhere near Tanzania/Kenya) to a town in a country very like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Salim observes as the newly independent country evolves, bringing Westernisation and redefining all the traditional roles of the local Africans, foreign business owners and former elites. Through his eyes we saw the negative effects of Western-style education transplanted rapidly into an African context. The book is both a criticism of newly independent African governments and of idealistic European intelligentsias who patronise Africa and sow chaos.

Naipaul's prose is absolutely excellent and the story is very gripping. Salim is a character through whom we observe the unfolding trouble with growing unease. His actions are at times deplorable but we view his plight with some sympathy. The use of an Asian narrator to observe the tension between the two entities of Africa and Europe gives this book a very original dimension. However, it seems as if his depiction of Africans, which persistently paints them indolent, stubborn and child-like is evidence of racist prejudice and criticism of this is certainly justified. He was a man of his time and this book reflects that. Read alongside other classics about Africa, such as 'Heart of Darkness', it offers an unsettling analysis of the early post-independence years of a very thinly disguised Congo/Zaire/DRC.

"The world is what it is, men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing have no place in it."

This is the best opening line I have ever come across

Loved this book. From the beginning all the way upto the end i just loved everything about it.

I read this classic book while on my first trip to India by myself as an adult, and it made a deep impression.

I don't normally select books from the political genre, but Naipaul is such a good writer I'll eventually read all his works. I'm still thinking through this one, and I'm simply going to list several quotes that hit me as being worth considering in today's world.
*"...a government that breaks its own laws can also easily break you. Your business associate today can be your jailer or worse tomorrow." Currently, here in America, members of the military are being kicked out/deported, etc. Now, any student of the American Revolution knows that those soldiers born in American didn't win the Revolution on their own: immigrants, especially people like Alexander Hamilton (a Founding Father who wasn't born on American soil who went on to develop one of the worlds most powerful financial system), not to mention LaFayette from France, who brought with him a navy to help America win independence. We NEED immigrants (language/diversity skill, etc) like we NEED allies. I do not know the extent of these military deportations, and must admit that this issue could be one that has been in play since the American Revolution. But current interviews of deported military associates indicate confusion.
More fake news? I don't know.
*"It isn't that there's no right and wrong here. There's no right," says the narrator about a newly formed government in Africa. 'That was what had happened to me,' thinks the narrator to himself. Imagine realizing that about one's own self. The narrator then decides to leave Africa. Will he make it out alive? That's the basis of the final fifth of the book. And, if he makes it out alive, will he be able to determine, in a future life in another place, what's right and what's wrong? But let me say there is clearly much that is RIGHT with America since I'm drawing comparisons. Social programs to help the hungry, Obama's great health care act of which I'm a member and without that act I can't get insurance at all as I have a pre-existing condition that is deadly.
In summary, it's true I don't know very much about political history in Africa. But I did, while reading this book, view varying sources such as wikipedia to add to my understanding of the book. And the best thing about this book is how, even though we don't like the narrator, we still root for the narrator to escape with his life.

This story of an Indian man born and raised in Africa post-WW2 varied from insightful to tragic to boring. Salim moves from his family home on the east coast to an unidentified city in central Africa which had been a Belgian colony (I suspect it is Kisangani, Zaire now DR Congo). There are distinct echos of Conrad's Heart of Darkness particularly in the first section.

I find the setting fascinating but the story is told in what I am beginning to think of as the "Booker Prize" style -- lots of description of Salim's thoughts and opinions and the action felt as if it was occurring at a distance even when it is happening to Salim himself.

Absolute boring with no storyline whatsoever. So much so, I didn't even finish it. I got to page 110, so my review is about those pages only.

It is basically a story about someone (Salim) who rents a shop near a river during 'African' independence. I have put the word 'Africa' in quotations because Naipaul seems to think Africa is a country and not a continent. He doesn't give an actual name to the country he is supposed to be narrating about and this weakens the 'story' (if you can call it that) even further.

The writing is also very disjointed and at times not grammatically correct and for me, this is highly irritating. You would think a Nobel Prize-winning author of literature to be able to, at the very least, arrange English sentences correctly but alas no. And this brings me on to my final point. How on this beautiful earth has this man been given a Nobel prize? Are the prize panel just out of touch? It really does beggar belief.

I try not to file books under 'B', and try with all my heart to finish them but, I'm sorry, my heart was just not in this at all. Awful book.

Naipaul is a magnificent novelist, reminiscent of Conrad in his brooding, threatening descriptions of Africa. His central character is an ethnic Indian brought up in East Africa, a trader who has bought a small business in a remote city along a major river. He's nobody, with no home, and no allies, and no place to run when things fall apart. There's little joy or love in these pages, which is saying something considering what a sharp-eyed chronicler Naipaul is. (Africa is, after all, a place to find joy and love.) Naipaul captures the contradictions and naivete that accompanied independence in much of Africa. The book is set in the Congo, and perhaps that predetermines its grim prognosis. Congo, after all, has not improved much in the last fifty years; and violent convulsions continue to mark its public life.

على الرغم من قيمة الرواية وجوها المختلف تماما عن كثير مما قرأت إلا أن الترجمة السيئة تحيل الأمر جحيما

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FROM BOOK: El Negro e io (Frank Westerman)

This is a novel of postcolonial Africa, like Things Fall Apart, but it is more complex, dense and more packed with ideas. I couldn't relate to the topic, found myself laboring to finish it, and I have realized that I will now choose the next 1001 books I read with more care as to theme. (African postcolonialism isn't one of my priorities. Such a theme seems dated, somehow, although doubtless with all that's happening in that continent when I read the news this novel still holds true in parts of Africa, even if it was written in 1979).

The central character of the novel is Salim, a Muslim of Indian descent who goes to a town at the bend of a river of an unnamed African nation to trade. The town he migrates to is precisely described in great detail, and there isn't much to recommend it.

The backdrop is depressing and in general the book is that, too. The country's future is dim, and so is Salim's. His life just lurches here and there, with no direction. The graft and petty cruelties endemic in an ancient culture that's coping with Western influences, the African dictator who imposes his ego on his countrymen, the swirl of ideas on what's best for Africans and their culture under these conditions, is presented subtly in very vivid descriptive prose. About the only thing that relieves this postcolonial tract (I use the term loosely; the novel is too well written to be classified as propaganda) is an affair Salim has with a married European, which ends abruptly and obliquely after a bout of inexplicable sadomasochism that apparently mirrors Naipaul's own sexual life. I don;t know why it was even necessary to spend that much time on this side story unless Naipaul couldn't help himself because of his own predilections.(I read a Time magazine review some years back of the authorized biography of Naipaul where it states that that his writing of women here changed as the novel was written after he'd taken up with a mistress and apparently beat her up a lot in the bedroom). The sexual affair and the number of pages it occupied jarred, somehow. It was like an inserted chapter. He should have shortened it or made it a more major part of the story, then its appearance would have made more sense.

Doubtless it's well-written, but I didn't like it so much, hence my rating. I actually enjoyed the simpler Things Fall Apart of Chinua Achebe more.

We can say that it is a work written in the context of Edward Said and Fanon theory. It explains how Europe ruled and how this ruling was colonized as the Great Man. Unfortunately, today is also like this!

Barack Obama once confessed to being troubled by this novel's famous opening line, because he thought it summed up the conservative view of the world.
"The world is what it is. Men who are nothing; who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."
This is a superb novel about changing Africa, written in clear, irreducible language.
Naipaul is a master in absolute control of his craft. Not a word out of place. Every word used exactly as intended. Hard to know how to find fault in a tapestry so finely and perfectly weaved. The author was clearly on fire when he was writing this, and at the height of his ability.
The flaw, if I dare say it, is not so much in the bleak overall effect of the work as a whole—which offers a pretty dark view of human nature, in which all endeavor is futile; the world is in constant flux, and baser, more ancient impulses will always reassert themselves, so all one can do is "carry on" when trouble appears. Or that there are people, like our main character Salim, who will never belong anywhere and can find no purchase in the world, no matter how hard they work to establish themselves.
The flaw is in Naipaul himself. His writing is given credence and power because he abides by what he knows (himself an Indian born in the West Indies, restless to understand his role in a postcolonial world and in doing so surveys, with a clear-eyed intelligence, all the damage colonialism caused). Naipaul has poured much of himself into Salim. He's clearly intended to be a sympathetic character, yet in one scene, he very violently beats up his Belgian girlfriend Yvette, and the author's concern is entirely for Salim, for the selfish emotional "pain" he feels over the incident, which says much, I suspect, about Naipaul's own antipathy towards women. Not a word of consideration is given for Salim's victim, who in fact comes crawling back to him. I admit that there may have been more going on here than I understood, (some broader theme of rage against the colonizer? Some black magic of the bush village at work?) But Salim very much "allows himself to become nothing" and in doing so lost all my sympathy. I stopped caring for him after that, and wouldn't have minded if the forces at work in this changing Africa had swallowed him up.
Most interesting for me was the steady rise of the Big Man, the dictator whose shadow looms over the story. The Big Man is combination of Idi Amin and Mobutu—promising at first, but bloody and cult-like toward the end. He is very much a character in the novel, though he never actually appears except in his omnipresent portraits.
I'm glad I read it. The novel reminded me that there are no limits in fiction: a writer can freely plumb the darkest pits of the human soul. But it has left me feeling uneasy, dissatisfied and a little confused.