I was going to read Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. I really really was. But even though I have really liked most of the recent books I've read I feel like I've become this read-bot just reading all these indie bookstore picks by American authors. I just had to jump out of my rut and read something ELSE. I read Half A Life a few years ago and enjoyed it in that "I like anti-colonialism literature" kind of way and I've had A Bend In the River sitting on my shelf since then. It promises to be negative and misogynistic and anti-colonial ... and decidedly not an "Indie pick" and right now that's what I'm going for.

I recently read the interview with V.S. Naipaul where much was made of his statement that no female writer can hold a candle to him and that he can tell if something is written by a female just by reading the first paragraph. I took the subsequent survey to see if I could identify female writers by one paragraph - presumably by their simpering, overly emotional tone or diction (I scored 4/10 and the quiz told me I needed to read more). That was a big factor in my motivation to read this book.

I vividly remember a discussion about "character novels" where nothing really happens but a character is layed out, flayed, and dissected from tip to toe. I said I liked novels like that. A Bend in the River fits into this category - with one major qualification - and it's made me change my stance on those so-called character novels.

To back up a bit, when I taught high school English I used to admonish students that whenever you see a river as a major piece of setting in a novel you should immediately think "life". River = life. It's one of the main metaphors. Add to that a certain amount of eye rolling. River = life. Okay, move on. This novel is titled "A Bend In The River". If you bear the above metaphor in mind, that tells you just about everything you need to understand about the novel, save one thing.

Salim, the main character, an Indian who has moved from the coast of Africa to the interior (the "heart" of Africa) at "A Bend In The River". The tension of this novel on it's most basic level is between being a "new man of Africa" or a "man of new Africa". This is a post-colonial Africa struggling to (re)define itself.

There's more to it in the details but that's the gist. I'm glad I read it but I'm also glad to be moving on. I would recommend this book to very few people. The writing didn't "wow" me and the rest, from the imagery, the tone, the characterization was just just what I expected.

A Bend in the River is a bit of a mixed-bag for me. On the one hand, Naipaul's ideological point in the novel, that the tares Nationalism brings to a post-colonial nation on the cusp of modernity can be very detrimental not just politically but - seldom acknowledged -psychically on it's inhabitants is very shrewdly made, in extremely vivid detail and stunning prose. He also, through the narrator, Salim, gives the reader a glimpse at the morally degrading qualities of mimetic rivalry; as he constantly compares himself with the lives of other people in the novel (Indar, Yvette, Naz) he feels are much further along the path of self-actualization than himself, he can't help but feel "backward" and "inept". Naipaul is as gifted a storyteller as I've ever come across. Reading this novel in 2018, I found the author and this book extraordinarily contemporary, despite having been written over 40 years ago.
BUT. I can't help shake the gnawing suspicion that Naipaul's attitudes towards Africa and - by consequence - Africans, is the product of extreme prejudice. Demuring over and over again their intellectual stuntedness, political retardation, religious fanaticism, ostensible violent proclivities. Not to speak of his explicit nostalgia for imperial rule; a time, as he saw it, of law and order - when he (Salim) and his family enjoyed great wealth and privilege at the expense of the natives. In that spirit, the unironic praise leveled at him by the Nobel committee as the closest thing this side of the 20th and 21st century to Conrad, is indeed apt.
With all that said, however, I definitely think this is a book worth reading and re-reading and - given our current climate - having several more looks at.

A Bend in the River starts in the childhood of Salim, our narrator. He is an African of Indian origin, living on Africa’s east coast - except this part of the continent can’t really be described as Africa:

“AFRICA WAS MY HOME, had been the home of my family for centuries. But we came from the east coast, and that made the difference. The coast was not truly African. It was an Arab-Indian-Persian-Portuguese place, and we who lived there were really people of the Indian Ocean.”

When civil unrest threatens, Salim heads into the interior to take up a business opportunity offered by a family friend. This is a shop selling bits of everything in a town beside a river in an unnamed central African country. Salim’s town is at the heart of both country and continent, but - in an irony characteristic of the book - seems very much a marginalised place. Despite the town’s central location, in terms of the river it lies right at the end of navigation, as far up stream as a boat can reach. The east coast might be not truly African, but Salim’s town in the middle is not truly African either. It’s a peripheral place, with a turbulent population riven by all kinds of allegiances. This situation is reflected in the real world. Think of the great cities of America, for example, and you’ll see that the top two - New York and Los Angeles - are ports on the coast, where there is the greatest interchange with other places. America’s geographical centre is in rural Kansas, close to the town of Lebanon, with a population of just over 200.

Pondering on the book after I’d finished it, I thought about a line in a Lindisfarne song about another town by a river:

“The fog on the Tyne is all mine.”

There’s a passage in A Bend in the River involving river mist.

“In the darkness of river and forest you could be sure only of what you could see –and even on a moonlight night you couldn’t see much. When you made a noise –dipped a paddle in the water –you heard yourself as though you were another person. The river and the forest were like presences, and much more powerful than you. You felt unprotected, an intruder. In the daylight –though the colours could be very pale and ghostly, with the heat mist at times suggesting a colder climate –you could imagine the town being rebuilt and spreading.”

The town is little more than a fleeting daydream. People think they own the fog, but the fog belongs to no one - or it belongs to everyone if you wish to look at things from a warmer perspective. Admittedly, a warmer perspective is not very evident in A Bend in the River.

Perhaps a warmer perspective comes from the sense that finishing the book, people might not be so quick to differentiate insiders from outsiders, people who belong from those who don’t. With the centre in the same place as the periphery, with home presented as such a nebulous concept, we might ironically become more welcoming and tolerant.

This is a wonderful book, set in an unnamed country in Africa. Salim moved to this country after a troubled period following independence to build his luck, setting up a shop in what used to be a colonial town. In a forgotten town at the edge of a river, people and events come and go as waves. A foreigner finds himself establishing relationships with very different people than he normally would, for lack of options. Around him, the country and its people try to find a future; a rebellion comes and goes; prosperity ensues; authoritarianism and corruption develop; flashy new buildings are built and then abandoned. As Mahesh says, "you do only what you can do. You carry on."

"...the aeroplane is a wonderful thing. You are still in one place when you arrive at the other. The aeroplane is faster than the heart. You arrive quickly and you leave quickly. You don't grieve too much. And there is something else about the aeroplane. You can go back many times to the same place. And something strange happens if you go back often enough. You stop grieving for the past. You see that the past is something in your mind alone, that it doesn't exist in real life. You trample in the past, you crush it. In the beginning it is like trampling on a garden. In the end you are just walking on ground."

"With each job description I read I felt a tightening of what I must call my soul. I found myself growing false to myself, acting to myself, convincing myself of my rightness for whatever was being described. And this is where I suppose life ends for most people, who stiffen in the attitudes they adopt to make themselves suitable for the jobs and lives that other people have laid out for them."

"This piece of earth - how many changes had come to it! Forest at a bend in the river, a meeting place, an Arab settlement, a European outpost, a European suburb, a ruin like the ruin of a dead civilization, the glittering Domain of new Africa, and now this."

Naipaul is one of those 'heavy' writers who I think I always subconsciously avoided when younger (especially after my one brush with Rushdie which didn't end well). So I picked this up without too much planning and with the aim of reading something less fluffy yet fictional. To be honest - I loved the whole process of reading (listening) to it despite the lack of a conventional plot. The prose is simple and flows languorously, the observations are always relatable and will have you nodding and the history lessons (especially in the early part of the book, Chapter 2) are amazing eye-openers which left me wishing why I didn't read this earlier.

We travel with Salim (an intelligent man of Indian descent) who moves away from his family catchment area on the coast to somewhere which sounds like the Congo. It's just post-independence and as Salim settles down in an unknown town to run his shop we see the country change and his outlook too over the next decade or so. That is all there really is to it as a plot - the other characters are all essentially to give a window into the country and Salim's own mental ruminations. If you've ever felt you lack a purpose in life - I daresay you will find them agreeable. If not, they may seem as rambling as the Catcher in the Rye :)

The characters are very African - the local tradeswoman who knows magic, the boy picked up and sent to school and coming into power because he's the right place at the right time, the megalomaniac narcissist of a black leader, the white man who looses sheen and power with time, the eccentric and well-intended priest who runs a school, the white women misled who seeks the pleasures of the flesh as an outlet, the enterprising Indian entrepreneur who's always going places, the corrupt cop, the propped-up beneficiary of nationalization who demands respect etc. Somewhere towards the second half of the book I thought some of the stereotypes were getting very heavy but then again this is a story of one city, in one country in Africa so anything we're extrapolating is more with us than the author as he would know doubt tell us. It is a cynical and bleak work - but at the same time it's more generic about human beings than about a certain type of human beings. So while I sensed the racism that he's accused of by many there's nothing to really put a finger on in this tale.

The scene which seemed egregious (as with most readers) was the one where Salim slaps his lover Yvette. Unlike some reviewers on GR I have no issue about the event as such (men do beat women - right or wrong, it was probably more common 50 years ago) - it's more about the aftermath of the scene with little regret or scorn from both sides (in a story narrated in the first person) which actually made me wonder if I have understood the character correctly? Is there a bit of a unreliable narrator here somewhere given the extent of self-awareness we've seen so far? But no we move right along and that scene somehow jars (in 2021) at least.

If it is just for the writing, I'd really like to give this 5+ stars if possible - for making a plotless book so enthralling and the town at the Bend of the River so real.

Một quyển sách về châu Phi giai đoạn vừa giành được độc lập từ châu Âu, và một nhóm người châu Âu đã sống, thân quen với châu Phi bỗng dưng bị kẹt trong một tình thế kỳ lạ. Họ vừa là người quen vừa trở thành người lạ của đời sống châu Phi biến chuyển trong giai đoạn mới. Cảm giác lạc lõng, cô đơn và hoang mang lan toả dần trong truyện cho đến cuối. Những biến cố đẩy họ gần nhau và cũng xa nhau hơn, đưa mỗi người đến những bước lang thang mới trên đường đời.

Không chỉ họ - nhóm người châu Âu, mà ngay người dân châu Phi cũng bị cuốn theo những biến động và thay đổi mới. Mà trong guồng ấy, sự tham lam và bất lực của con người càng hiện rõ hơn.

Điểm trừ là do mình mong chờ nhiều hơn những đoạn viết về cuộc sống của người bản xứ, nhưng vì truyện tập trung đa số chi tiết vào nhóm người châu Âu tại châu Phi, nên không miêu tả nhiều hơn số phận và góc nhìn của người dân trong cuộc.
Văn phong trong bản dịch hơi khô, không nhiều tính văn học để đẩy hơn cao trào trống vắng của lòng người trong không khí lãng đãng, hoang mang chung; nhưng có lẽ vì bản gốc cũng vậy rồi.

Comecei a ler “A Curva do Rio” com entusiasmo, pois o tema da África pós-colonial, com as suas lutas internas e a difícil definição de um rumo, era novo para mim e deixou-me curiosa. Mas, ao longo das cerca de 400 páginas, fui perdendo o interesse com a escrita demasiado “enrolada” do autor.

Salim é um indiano natural da Costa Leste de África que decide viajar para o interior e ser comerciante numa cidade que aparenta estar em franco desenvolvimento. Porém, com as guerras tribais, o ódio crescente aos estrangeiros e as medidas desastrosas de um ditador que não sabe bem o que quer, o nosso protagonista vê o seu modo de vida ameaçado e começa a pensar que, se calhar, a cidade na curva do rio não é a melhor opção para si.

Na minha opinião, se o tema tivesse sido abordado de outra forma, teria gostado mais do livro. O autor é repetitivo, “engonha” muito e demora cinco páginas para dizer o que poderia ser dito numa. Confesso que houve alturas no livro em que saltei páginas e, ao apanhar a história mais à frente, não senti que tivesse perdido o fio à meada. O final é um pouco abrupto tendo em conta o ritmo lento do livro. Aprendi algumas coisas, mas bocejei também bastante.

It's easy to see why this book is controversial. Narrated in first person by a protagonist who could charitably be said to be possessed of a certain moral flexibility, or could more bluntly be called a scumbag, it's never made clear that the author disapproves of his stance. This could lead to the assumption that Naipaul himself is a racist, vicious and parochial man whose violence is only restrained by a certitude of his own impotence. Such is the "hero" of the book.

And yet, what other kind of protagonist could there be in this story of survival during the collapse, re-emergence, stagnation and corruption of civilization in central Africa? In a setting of casual molestation by officials who are terrified by and feel powerless to affect the near future, what honest narrative could be given that portrays a virtuous citizen? Lines can be drawn between scenes of helpless complicity and scenes of horrifying action. At one point, the narrator passively watches members of the Youth Guard leading a crying girl off to be raped. A few chapters later he brutally assaults his lover, for no clear reason, then miserably tells his confidante that she made him do it. Lacking in personal responsibility or a moral center, he adapts to his surroundings and blindly lays blame without understanding what he is becoming and why. Surely the author understood this.

At the same time, the racism in the narrator's voice feels real. His justification of slavery as a way of life, his dismissal of the bush people as, not only inferior, but different in kind from himself, his simultaneous envy and disgust for Arabs and Europeans seem to belie a mind that fundamentally rejects the idea of racial equality.

Laying aside ad hominem considerations, this is a book where strong themes are rooted in a narrative of banality. This conveys a sense of acceptance in the violence (physical and moral) inflicted. There's something very disturbing in how the narrator and his colleagues discuss considerations of money and property while people are being brutalized and murdered in the streets. It's a dismal picture of Africa in particular, and of mankind in general. The recurring maxims and pithy sayings "It's not that there's no right and wrong. There's no right." drive home the point that in order to survive (and even prosper), one can't get fussy about niceties.

One would like to think that people wouldn't stoop so low. That naivete may be where the author's violence is really directed.

داستان خم رودخانه که به دوران پس از استقلال کشوری بی نام و نشان می پردازد، توسط مردی هندی به نام سلیم روایت می شود. سلیم، مغازه ای در شهری کوچک و در حال توسعه دارد و زندگی اش، با دیدن تغییرات سریع و مداوم آفریقا گره خورده است.

بخشهایی از داستان:

این کار، قاچاق را آسان می کرد؛ اما من می ترسیدم که خودم را درگیر این کار کنم، چون حکومتی که قوانین خودش را زیر پا می گذارد، به راحتی می تواند شما را هم زیر پا بگذارد.

مسئله این نیست که این جا، درست و غلط وجود ندارد. بلکه این جا، هیچ چیز درستی وجود ندارد.

ممکن است اتفاقات واقعی، تحریف شوند و واقعیات، تغییر یابند. اما داستان ها هیچ وقت دروغ نمی گویند.

No. Just no.
This was just not it for me.

So are we surprised this book was so incredible? The guy won the Nobel after all. My grandmother, by the way, when she heard that my husband won the Pulitzer, immediately began telling people he won the Nobel. The Nobel Peace Prize, actually.

F this book. Casual gender violence and indifferent colonial violence, all set in some fake "universal" town in the dark foreboding interior of (say it all breathless-like now--) Africa. The whole book is full of deep lessons about the nature of humankind but they're all shallow, privileged, cliched, and cruel. Not cruel lessons like how life sucks, but cruel in the way the author can't write in the humanity of any character save the narrator. This too could have been ok, and I spent a lot of the book thinking that the narrator's ickiness was exemplary craft. But it's not. It's one more work in a body of horrid colonial literature that continues to be labeled "classic" by the descendants of colonizers. Naipaul's unique position writing about an Indian merchant from British-ruled East Africa living in the post-Belgium Congo (because seriously, dude, with all the bullshit about universalism and never naming the town, you set your book pretty obviously in a single time and place) could have been fascinating; the layers of power, the struggle to both distinguish oneself from the colonial oppressor, threatened after independence, and yet to identify with the colonizer's culture and power. Alas, no insight here. I really wanted the narrator to be brutally murdered in the end, but even that disappointed.

This, like many books by ruling class authors, could perhaps have been saved by specificity. Who are you and where are you coming from?

---
Would suggest Anthills of the Savannah if you want an actually good book exploring some similar themes (post-independence corruption, violence, etc.).