All About Books discussion

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

The 90th book in this series is by yet another Nobel Prize winner: Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul or short V.S. Naipaul, a Trinidad - born British author who was knighted 1989.

The book McCrum has chosen is A Bend in the River(1979) which is perhaps the novel that most nearly touches the author’s inner concerns. Salim, who comes from the east coast of Africa, from a long-established Indian trading family, uproots himself to the heart of an unnamed African country as a merchant and sets up shop in an unnamed town at this “bend in the river””
The quote at the beginning of this post is the celebrated opening line of the book, which shows that Salim, like Naipaul himself, is under no illusions about his move

The book was met with lots of enthusiasm both from critics as from other authors. The critic Elizabeth Hardwick called the book “a haunting creation, rich with incident and human bafflement, played out in an immense detail of landscape rendered with poignant brilliance”. Edward W. Said however accused the novel of attacking both the Islam and the Arab population.

You can find the article here along with a link to an interview V.S. Naipaul has given to McCrum in 2008

I haven't read this but it is on my long-list TBR. My impression is that it is a long book so I have been putting it off until my reading calendar clears up some but I should make reading this & several other books part of my plan for next year. I am starting to realize that my reading calendar may never clear up!!

I hadn't realized that Naipaul was born in Trinidad, interesting.

I am currently reading this - I don't know why I thought it was a long book.

I have done a little digging into its setting -- it seems likely that the unnamed city & country are Kisangani, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), formerly known as Stanleyville in the Belgian Congo. There are echoes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness so I find it fascinating that it is most likely set in the same part of Africa.

I am also finding parts of it sadly prophetic given some of the terrible civil wars, rebellions and genocide that continent has seen since 1979.