المسرود مذهل.. الترجمة رديئة

I remain a sucker for a good story and this book does not really tell one. In the course of three hundred plus pages nothing really spectacular or remarkable happens. You learn about life in a remote town by a stream in a country in the heart of Africa (most likely Congo/Zaire), about the uncertainty of life there for both the locals and foreigners, about how it must be to not really have a place where one 'belongs', about how from one day to another you can witness your fairly successful business decline and fall into the hands of incompetent people all because of the whims of some demented dictator... So in a way, the book does tell a story, but not so much about people but about an unnamed town in an unnamed country in the heart of Africa...

Only for those truly into Africa.

Like a cross between Bridge On The Drina and an extended re-mix of Heart Of Darkness, this extraordinarily well-written tale of the evolution of a settlement at the eponymous "bend in the river" revolves around the MC Salim who is mainly an observer/documenter/philosophically-muser-upon events, although he does get involved himself (a bit). Should be 5 stars on its own terms, but coldly admirable rather than warmly loveable, so 4.

پیش از این کتاب مشتمالچی عارف را از نایپل خوانده بودم و از داستان زیبا و لحن طنزآمیز آن بسیار لذت برده بودم. خم رودخانه جذابیت کتاب قبلی را ندارد هر چند موضوع آن تا حدودی مهم تر و انسانی تر است. البته ترجمه هم چندان روان و دلچسب نبود