This book turned out to be more readable/interesting than I'd expected based on when it was written and the ad hoc basis for its narrative. I appreciated getting to learn about the countries in a manner not dissimilar to what one would experience themselves via travel. However, I wish the author had also discussed whatever positive aspects existed in the countries (rather than allowing his attention to be drawn to the individuals who seemed the saddest or most outlandish) and sought out more perspectives from locals living in each area (rather than relying on whichever tourists and government officials he happened to encounter in his travels). I personally disagree with the racist and colonialist views shared in the book, but I suppose it cannot be faulted for being the messenger of what the individuals he encountered felt at the time.

Shiva Naipaul is NOT an early pseudonym used by V.S. Naipaul (so annoying...the V.S., slightly pretentious. Why?) as I thought might be the case when I delighted in finding this at a discount bin in a Banker's Hill coffee shop. This was the primary reason for my selecting this book over Somerset Maugham's cheaper account of traveling in Southeast Asia. Plus, though not everyone will like Africa, but I'd rather read about "the dark continent" than southeast Asia. Sorry.

Shiva is V.S.'s brother. He is not a great travel writer by today's standards, but may very well have been when this book was published. The narrative is priceless, in any case, for an India-heritaged-Trinidad-and-Tobago-native-and-British-Citizen-traveling-on-a -K passoport's experiences with "balck", "white" and "brown" racism in Eastern Africa in the sixties and seventiers. I mostly like the sometimes humorous, but always uniquely African pprtraits of Ethiopian, Tanzanian, Zambian, Zimbabwian (back then, actually Rhodesian), Burundian, Zairian life prior to the onset of mass tourism and global homogenization.

Here is another a Naipaul (younger brother to the famous V.S.) who is an insightful and generally unpleasant man. However, this may just add to the outsider providing perspective with scathing social commentary. Once again I appreciate the unusual take on race politics from the Trinidad born Indian traveling in Africa. Normally one only hears about blacks and whites, but I appreciated hearing about the self-imposed isolation of the Asian population and its effects. While much of it seems dated, he did articulate sentiments I couldn't put into words myself. Commentary on eco-tourists with interest in animals alone, not the native (human) population, had me giggling with familiarity. I know people who spent thousands on African safaris who found Africans themselves were a distraction. Would love to discuss this with those living in that region now.. I hope things have changed because it's fairly depressing.

tragic, and interesting, and at times, beautiful. The portrait of casual racism is so different from what's now acceptable. It's amazing to realize that people really did think that way and consider themselves liberal and friends of the people they pitied so strongly. Really a very interesting book.

Naipaul is a Shakespearean in his views of the black and white east africa. I like the honesty geared especially at the political failures and the greed that he encountered. I also like how brutally realistic he portrayed the racism that everyone guessed is still going on the continent but never quite openly discussed, especially in the form of the self-isolation of Indians (“Asians”). But what I don’t like is the contrast/confusion between Naipaul’s jadedness about the “corrupted soul” and how much comfort he derives from “shades” and a “five star shelter”. He seems to be a guy that disdains capitalism but enjoys “a good cigar or good caviar”. But I guess the point is that there was not a single good person that he met during his journey north of south, not including himself

A colorful account of travels in East and Southern Africa from the perspective of an author of Indian descent. Entertaining - if you've been to Africa, his observations will ring true!

Wow. Basically hated this.

Tedious, aimless, superficial. I had to skim the last 20% of this book, as I just couldn't bear to read any more of Naipaul's one-note caricaturing of East Africa, or, as the book frequently proclaims, AAAAAAFRICA. This is a reductivist and therefore incredibly boring portrayal of Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. Its main message seems to be: "Whoa, this place is a shithole. And everyone here is an idiot!" Yeah, thanks, Shiva.

I can see why this book would be praised for its seemingly gloves-off "brutal honesty" about the racism and political failures of 1970s Africa. But, honestly, I think the people who would offer such praise probably (1) haven't visited the region, and (2) if they have, came away with a pretty skewed interpretation of it all.

Everyone Naipaul portrays in this book speaks with the same voice (a red flag) and exhibits the same one-dimensional stupidity. Everyone in this book - from the over-anxious Indian Kenyan in the first pages, to the lugubrious, hypocritical Tanzanian bureaucrat falling asleep in his AC, to basically any American/European in a "crazy/racist expat" cameo - is a fool. And (I suspect) Naipaul revels in it. "Look at these people! No wonder this place is so poor!" seems to be the implicit conclusion.

I live in Tanzania, and have lived in other developing countries. And I was deeply disappointed by this book, as it covered incredibly interesting topics (the Ujamaa policy in Tanzania, and the troubled history of the South Asian diaspora in East Africa), and there just aren't that many books to read about here.

This is essentially a travel journal Naipaul keeps on his (relatively brief) trip through East Africa, and I don't see any reason why his musings should be any more valuable than, say, just a plain ol' history book. His tone stank of condescension throughout but - when he arrived in Tanzania and visited places I've visited myself - any illusion that his writing was anything but mockery was shattered. I've been to those places. Yes, sometimes things don't work. No, not everyone is such a full-blown idiot. Fans of this book may be surprised to find that there are a number of intelligent, well-rounded, nice folks here too. And sometimes things work really well. *COUGH*M-Pesa*

If you're wondering why some places are poor and some places aren't, and if you're curious about a (brief) history of (anywhere in) Africa, I'd recommend this or this instead.

I should also note that this book seems to be part of a worrying Cynical and Snarky Among the Less Fortunate genre: similar to things like The Sex Lives of Cannibals or Eksil (Exile). Or Slumdog Millionaire. i.e. "Gritty realism" which is really just poverty porn with a bad attitude. i.e. Stuff that relies entirely on othering the people you choose to write about.

Argh, and don't even GET ME STARTED on Naipaul's portrayal of women in this. GARBLE GARBLE FEMRAGE GARBLE. *tears out hair*

tl;dr: Mocking caricatures of E. Africa. Don't waste your time.

Don't really remember...

Shiva Naipaul's subject matter of Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia of the late 70s was well chosen. Each of those countries shared experiences in common but, strangely enough, they also chose different paths forward. Naipaul, like his Nobel-winning brother, writes well and he also shares his misanthropy. Most misanthropes I've met, balance their antipathy towards their fellow man with a love for nature and its non-human animals. Not Naipaul. He seems to have a distaste for both. Generally speaking, being a bit of a misanthrope myself, I should have a soft spot for someone like Naipaul. I think, unlike Paul Theroux, what undermines Naipaul is a crankiness that is rarely leavened by wit. It's a flaw in North of South and I don't know if I'll persevere to find out if or if not it is a flaw in his other books.

An account of East Africa in the 1970s written by V.S. Naipaul's younger brother, who travelled through Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Interesting to see how different the political systems of the countries were back then! Kenya was almost as crazily capitalist as it is now; Tanzania was a socialist mess; Zambia was just bizarre.

These days the three nations are quite similar to each other but even back then the Chinese engineers were controlling large sectors of their economies, especially the railways and ports. Shiva's account tells of meetings with old colonialists, hippies, idealists, eccentrics, corrupt officials and madmen.

Like his elder brother, Shiva is at his best when describing encounters and conversations with the people he chances to meet and at his worst when philosophising about human behaviour in general. On the whole it's a good book. Sad in parts, funny in others.

Book Review
North of South
Shiva Naipaul
5/5 stars
"A 50 year old travel memoir that could have been written yesterday"
(1577 word review: 5m44s)
*******
Verdict: Recommended

This classic is a snapshot in time of East Africa in the early '70s. (Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia. This is around the time of the Indian expulsion from Uganda.)

Zambia (35 pages; 10%)
Tanzania (162 pages; 49%)
Kenya (117 pages; 35%)

It's a jewel, because there are very few people that can write honestly, perceptively, neutrally and engagingly about their surroundings. It feels like someone who could write about this particular time is about is probable as the Big Bang.

The author is a Trinidad Indian, and a fly on the wall for the events. He gathers his information by talking to Everyman on the street. ("The answer to such questions cannot be found in the abstract speculations of theorists and professional revolutionaries - who often simply don't see the world in which they live.")

On the one hand, he doesn't think too much of the Africans, obviously. (African hatred of Indians is a running theme throughout the book.)

But on the other, the Africans really aren't much to write home about-- And maybe the author was just being objective. (Several decades later, the Chinese found them equally unimpressive.. It's also interesting that they have been building shoddy infrastructure for them for about half a century. p.334)

It's really a lot of the expected, which is: low general mental ability, incompetence, and corruption. (p.205. The Kenyan border official took the author's money right at the border and put it directly in his pocket.) There's also a substantial recurrence of unattractive white women that come there to make bacon with the African men (p.259). Or, Loopy Guilty White People (p.336). Or, ignorant black Americans that try to shoehorn Africa into their racial conceptual space (p. 283).

The largest Indian population in Africa is in South Africa. 1.6 million out of a population of 63 million. (Kenya: 110,000 out of a population of 55 million; 13,000 in Zambia out of a population of 21 million; 60,000 in Tanzania out of a population of 67 million.)

Tiny numbers of people, really, for them to occupy the African's thoughts to hate them so much. (p.321: "as is the case all over Eastern Central Africa, it is not the wife's who aroused the greatest animosity, but the Asian Indians. My state coincided with a vigorous anti-Asian campaign in the Zambian press.)

I think the quotes are enough to give the reader an idea:

(19) Cancellation of the flight would come about only if President or Madame Mobutu suddenly decided he or she needed a plane.

(23) "They need us. We are indispensable. Without us they would still be swinging from the trees."

(25) "They only kill each other as a rule. They never touch Europeans- - or hardly ever."

(28) British citizens of Asian (=Indian) origin needed a visa to enter Kenya

(31) A week later my suitcase did - miraculously - - turn up, minus my transistor radio and a number of lesser items. (Author had his bags rifled
through and stolen by the airline ground crew in Africa.)

(45) "The only thing to do with Africans is give them a nice chair, give them a Nice sounding title to go with it and put them where they can do the least harm"..... Stories of African conceptual incapacity have acquired something of the abstract quality of fable.

(54) We can lose one self without gaining another. Our development can be indefinitely arrested at the stage of caricature.

(71) 'I'm sorry to seem so jailer-like, but pilfering, I'm afraid, is a big problem. I have to keep everything under lock and key. They take the oddest things sometimes, things they can't possibly have any use for."

(90) He told the story of the government official who had openly declared that he would never allow his children to be taught by Africans..... Nearly all the long settled English I met in Kenya had succumbed to a similar degenerative process: They lived off their Englishness and whiteness. It was their chief asset.

(106) The Gujarati merchant I met in Mombasa said to me his family had been resident in Mombasa for over a hundred years, but they have remained of India..... He, the born in East Africa, had been educated in India, and it was to India he had gone to find a bride of the required purity.

(121) It's not accidental that the sexual and accessibility of Asian [Indian] women excites so much rancor.

(145) It was not the society that had thrown them out, and not any place in the whole world either, but time had done it, they did not belong to their century.... They were examples of atavism.

(163) She wanted, as her hairstyle indicated, to be proudly African and at the same time, as the skin lightening creams in her bedroom indicated, to abolish Africa.

(165) none of them could, properly speaking, be said to have a stable personality. They were made up of a number of separate and warring selves. Hence the wild veering between farce, piety, and up-to-date cynicism.

(204. Nyrere) If the price of goodness is backwardness, then Tanzania will remain backward.

(214) Nyrere is following the right policies. I do not wish to see them develop. To be frank, speaking sociologically, I do not believe they are truly capable of such things. Why make them crap for the impossible? It will only lead to unhappiness..... I think their brains have been conditioned in a different way from ours.

(219) There were flies everywhere, settling around the eyes of the children and their mothers, feeding greedly on sores, spreading the infections which the clinics sought to combat. No attempt was made to brush the flies away: the victims seemed untroubled by their depredations.

(238; in 1978) The new environmentalism is part of the privileged consumption pattern of the affluent and industrialized; those who can afford the airfares, the hotels, the Land rovers and the guides; those whose children don't draw a water from whales and rarely get savaged by marauding hyenas.

(250) The road out of town was in a truly terrible state, it's existence often more notional than actual.

(259) One of the strangers specimens was a lone American girl, dowdy and appearance in Ernest in Manor, who said she had come to Africa and search of a "relevant ethnic experience." I told [the hotel owner] this. "What she means," he said, "is that she wants to be fucked by black men."

(271) The pat words, the pat phrases, unleavened by thought, came pouring out of Abdallah's mouth. In this society he would qualify as an "intellectual."

(272) Had I not learned, after all this time, that nothing in Africa had meaning? That nothing could be taken seriously?

(284) In Tanzania, where performance consistently negates intention, where every commodity - - butter, milk, meat, cheese, fish, chocolate, knives, forks, spoons, cups, saucers, baby diapers - - is in short supply, the socialist revolution is being built with words.

(297) The [eclipse] over Tanzania was a portent of supreme revolutionary significance. It was a warning that the oppressed and exploited could no longer be denied.

(314) The Zambian landscape is one note endlessly repeated.

(320) Zambia's finances are so bad that the salary is of civil servants are often in arrears; the university is unable to buy books to stock its libraries; cigarettes are insured supply because the manufacturers have no foreign exchange to purchase the necessary packaging materials.

(321) The economy of Mozambique would probably collapse of it did not allow South African technicians to operate its sports and railroads and encourage substantial numbers of its citizens to work in the mines of the enemy.

(329) Beer is a major -- some say *the* major--obsession of the Zambian people. Zambians, so the rumor runs, our second only to Australians in consumption of the beverage.

(332) Author: "Could you support 30 children?" Captain: "A few may die. But people are born to die. I want to see lots of people in Zambia who look like me. It is in my blood to give girls a pregnancy... And I pay... A girl attending University, about 900 kwacha; A girl in the 6th Form, about 700; a girl in the 5th Form, about 500; a Form 2 girl about 90. I give a pregnancy mainly to the Form 2. That is cheaper for me."

(334) The Chinese, for reasons best known to themselves, head kept their railroad separate from the Zambian network..... The railroad had been in operation for only a few months, but decay had already begun to set in."

(347) Black and white deserved each other. Neither was worth the shedding of a single tier colon both were rotten to the core..... Civilized man, it seems common can no more cope with prolonged exposure to the primitive than the primitive can cope with prolonged exposure to him.

Vocabulary:

raddled
rallying (UK usage)
dhoti
kurta
pandit (spelled here as "pundit")
duka
navvy
cataleptic
heraldry
Robert Ruark
mangrove
reprovingly
kekoi (male sarong)
bwana
immure(d)
simper
aslant
"grins cadaverously"

Factoids:

1. The author is very Anglicized; speaks English as a mother language and no Indian languages. (This is not uncommon; I read that 10, 000 people speak Hindi as a second language out of a population of 547K people.)

2. It also appears that caste disappeared in Trinidad Indians.

3. Nyrere translated Shakespeare into Swahili.

Disappointingly shallow but with moments of real insight. Shiva Naipaul has his brother's misanthropic authorial voice and skeptical outlook but I thought this was a subpar effort. It's a travelogue but you never get the sense that he has spent the time or energy to do real analytical work or get deeply in touch with the areas he is traveling through (Kenya, Tanzania). Instead it amounts to a series of vignettes, some tiresome, some interesting and he is pretty open about the fact that he doesn't know much about the places he's visiting. Makes me want to go back and read more of V.S.'s travel writing to see if, in retrospect, it suffers from the same shallowness. Still, there are moments of brilliance and the scorn is spread widely (universally, even). There are moments that read, to me, as racist from the vantage of 2020; white settlers and colonial administrators are more forcefully criticized and ridiculed than the Kenyan's and Tanzanians he interacts with but the outright scorn with which he observes much of his surroundings and the people he comes in contact was discomforting.