What is missing from Siva Naipaul's account of Africa is Africans. His writing is sharp and incisive, but most of it is based on interactions with the people he manages to interact without much effort: hoteliers, bureaucrats, fellow travellers, immigration officials. As such, the picture he portrays of Africa in the seventies is how Whites, Asians, and a few mid level African bureaucrats. His dismissal of socialism in Tanzania is entirely based on whether the hotel bus works or not, what one particular local individual has to say about the state of affairs, and a few other characters. What is missing is an understanding of the state of the majority. At least in Tanzania, he tries but fails to visit a concept village, but in Kenya and Zambia, he doesn't even bother to try to find out for real how common people have fared under ideological states like Tanzania, semi-idealist state of Zambia and the completely free-for-all-takers Kenya.
What saves this book somehow is a reasonably well articulated investigation of African hatred of Asians and a few generalizations (e.g. both blacks and whites deserve each other, both are not worth a tear, both have been corrupted by contact with each other), which though sweeping in nature, are thought provoking enough to call for a better book to dwell more thoroughly on the same questions. Shivaji Das

This one's a tough book to review as it's really all the travel lit we have from the author before his early death. Although the material is rather dated now, Naipaul does such a good job navigating post-Colonial Africa as someone neither black nor white, so recommended for that, as well as emphasis on the black-Asian rift; the journeys take place long after Amin tossed the Asians out of Uganda. Moreover, he's fairly good natured about going with the flow in the often-dysfunctional circumstances encountered.

Not for everyone, as you can tell from the Goodreads reviews below. Some people are going to hate Naipaul and hate this book. He is cynical, suspicious, and highly critical. Especially if you decide that you don't buy his criticisms of what Paul Johnson called the "Bandung Generation" - African socialism and more generally all those post-colonial Third World nations that distinguished themselves in the decades following World War 2 with a Marxist-flavored anti-Western stance - you will find no shortage of reasons to discard his assertions. He doesn't talk to the right people, he makes broad generalizations, he brings his theory with him and tries to impose it on reality etc etc.

In other words, this is a highly subjective and personal travelogue with clear biases. For whatever reason I find Naipaul highly interesting, in the sense that his ideas seem both plausible to me and also very perceptive. Both this book and Journey to Nowhere are loaded with honest and incisive observations. Naipaul wasn't afraid to challenge the socially approved pablum. He views human nature as radically (viz., located in the core, not in every aspect) depraved. The racism of the old-type European stragglers in East Africa is evil; the consumption-based environmentalism and blind adoration of anything African by the new-type European fellow-travelers is evil; the self-destructive delusion and corruption of the newly self-governing Africans is also evil.

Naipaul doesn't serve us comfort food here. But it does smell of reality.

This was a very readable, intelligent and thoughtful book that was written with I am not sure what purpose. Shiva Naipaul, the brother of VS Naipaul, traveled through Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia in search of Africa, and came back with some pretty negative, but sometimes amusing, impressions. The journey took place and the book was written in the 1970's, so the book is a bit dated. But its very datedness was very educational - I know very little about semi-recent African politics and Naipaul's work helped fill in some holes. What perplexes me is why Naipaul wrote the book - he is so wry, negative, hopeless about the countries he visits and the people he meets. Did he really mean to leave us with the message that it is all hopeless?

I found so much relevance in tbis book, 50 years after it was written. Nailpuls' observations are almost unscrutable but his opinion is crystal clear through clever structure and a scathing final paragraph so unlike the rest. With tbis book he has changed my perspective of the world. Feels like a timely intervention.

A very good and quite gripping read. Africa from a different viewpoint, and able to include so many views. Well recommended.

Words ..words. words. That is the story of Africa.

excellent account of travels in East Africa (so perfect reading for my Kenya trip) -- part entertaining travelogue, part insightful political commentary

Differ from usual admiration of her spectacular landscape and culture, Shiva Naipaul brought us a very unique picture of Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Naipaul's emigrant background gifted him an interesting angel of observation. White, black and yellow all live on the same land, yet in a subtle way of human interaction. Sincere and authentic.

S Naipaul is not lost. He knows what defines him. His experience is at odds with the South Asian experience in Africa, where by all accounts they have not been assimilated as the rest of the diaspora. Overall, it's an enjoyable account his travels, but I believe that he fails to capture the African viewpoint entirely.

One of the most transformative books I've ever read. It helped me see through an entirely different lens and cast off bias' I never would have seen otherwise. Highly recommended.

Candid observation on Africa in seventies.