About this title: Based on Idi Amin's Uganda, Naipaul's novel is about an outsider, a Muslim Indian merchant named Salim, whose store in a small town on the Congo is threatened and finally lost in the chaos of the prevailing political regime. Gradually, not only the store but the town itself succumbs to the corruption.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage
Date Published: 1989
ISBN-13:9780679722021ISBN:0679722025
Description: Good. Ex-Library with usual stamps, stickers & markings. Different cover, same ISBN. Cover has slight shelf wear. Pages are clean and unmarked. read more
Description: Good. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 0679722025 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Description: VG+ Used, Like New in VG+ jacket. SOFT COVER, VG+/VG+, Vintage, 1989, 0.64 in. H x 8.1 in. L x 5.18 in. W, 8.6 oz. This copy has very minimal signs of use, appears to have been very lightly read, is in Excellent Condition Overall. Note: expect tanning of any paperback more than a few years old, regardless of condition. read more
Description: Good. Purchasing this DVD supports the North Central Regional Library. Thriftbooks and NCRL have partnered to help raise additional funds for the library system. Library ID found on DVD and case. Ex-Library book-will contain library markings. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Acceptable. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Good. 0783886160 Former library item may have library binding and show stamps, stickers or other marks. Items not meeting quality expectations may be returned. Due to the large scale of our operation, we do not have access to the specific contents/condition of our items. read more
Edition: Large Print edition
Binding: hardcover
Publisher: G. K. Hall & Company
Date Published: 1999
ISBN-13:9780783886169ISBN:0783886160
Description: Fair in good dust jacket. ex-library/associated marks/stickers, otherwise clean text; dj in protective sleeve & pasted down; general wear; spine slant; Large Print; Unabridged; read more
Edition: 2nd printing
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Date Published: 1979
ISBN-13:9780394505732ISBN:0394505735
Description: Good in good dust jacket. Ex-library. library markings, stains on flyleaf, cover of jacket worn, tear at top of spine of jacket; text and binding firm. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 278 p. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Date Published: 1980
ISBN-13:9780140052589ISBN:0140052585
Description: Good. * BOOKS DISPATCHED WITHIN 24 HOURS * SATISFACTION GUARANTEED * ALL QUESTIONS ANSWERED PROMPTLY * SHIPPED FROM UK * USA DELIVERY IN 3-5 DAYS * SHIPPED FROM UK: USA & EUROPE SPECIALISTS DELIVERY IN 3-5 DAYS. read more
"I am finding that Africa has become a theme in my life as of late. Africa is not something that I'm intentionally seeking out, but for whatever reason I'm finding out more and more about the landscape, culture, and political history (is that any different than culture?), of this continent. I picked up A Bend in the River because I was visiting a friend in NYC who had a book club that was reading it, and she wanted me to join them. The meeting eventually got canceled, but I couldn't have picked a better book to read after Heart of Darkness. It was as if I'd landed in the exact same spot Conrad drifted by, but in the next generation after the Belgians had left the Congo Basin.
The story is told in first person by Salim, an African man of Indian descent whose family has for centuries lived "on the coast" and who leaves his family compound just shy of political and economic disruption to seek his future in the interior of the continent. The precise location is never disclosed but others have suggested that Naipaul uses the DRC as the model for his fictitious country.
I can't say I "enjoyed" this read, but I do feel that I was privy to a unique portrait of a region from one perspective and incited to learn more about the political realities represented in the narrative. I recommend that anyone reading this book, spend a little time on Wikipedia to get an orientation to the context of the region.
Having recently been introduced to Kevin Bales and his work on current slavery (See Disposable People, The Slave Next Door, and Ending Slavery) I'd learned a little about the situations Naipual's character Salim describes when he talks about visiting the brothels, or his "servant" that joins him from the coast. Salim's normally penetrating and astute gaze, somewhat glosses over the oppression of his "servant" and the "women" (most-likely enslaved girls) in his brothel. But as with Heart of Darkness, Salim's perspective isn't necessarily the author's perspective, and a fictional character isn't beholden to expose every injustice present in his daily life. Considering such a character would personally benefit from such oppression, it's understandable that he wouldn't consciously admit it. Such an admission might even rob the character of his believability.
Even so, there is something "sticky" for me about these omissions...because as a reader, I thought, 'huh, I guess there is a cultural form of slavery in some parts of Africa that doesn't include violence, and isn't it nice that people like Salim's family looked after and educated their slaves' - when given my recent education from Kevin - this understanding is a flat out lie at worst, and very romanticized at best.
But these thoughts aside, what was truly gorgeous in Naipaul's novel were the diverse portraits within a historically complicated region and the painterly landscapes and interiors where his characters endure their fate. But this description makes the story seem static, and nothing could be further from the truth. Within these scenes, a tension is waiting to snap that accompanies the reader who dwells with the Africans in their lives of uncertainty. But the reader can, thankfully, set the story aside. Were that the case for the real communities who inspired the work in the first place."
"This novel from the hand of 2001 Nobel Prize laureate V.S. Naipaul is more about time and place than action. The time is the 1960s, the place an unspecified country that is probably the Congo (or "Zaire" as it was called then). And one of the major "off screen" characters, "The Big Man," is likely modeled on the totalitarian ruler Joseph Mobutu. The novel is narrated by an Indian, whose family has been settled in Eastern African for generations, and who moves to a city in central Africa on "a bend in the river." Here he opens a shop and attempts to sustain his small business at a time just after the fall of colonialism when the clouds of conflict and revolution are gathering. The novel begins with these words: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." Lost in Africa and surrounded by a cultural and political world that is slippery and volatile, the narrator strives to escape from becoming nothing. He engages Africa on a variety of levels from the political and economic to the romantic and he is absolutely unsentimental about what he experiences. All around he sees political forces that claim to be creating a "new Africa," but such forces, he believes, are creating only an "Africa of words," that has little to do with the Africa that actually surrounds him. Africans themselves, as portrayed here, are usually not quite what they seem, but they have their own small piece of security, to which they can always slip away: "The Africans had called up this war; they would suffer dreadfully, more than anybody else; but they could cope. Even the raggedest of them had their villages and tribes, things that were absolutely theirs. They could run away again to their secret worlds and become lost in those worlds, as they had done before" (p. 71). Naipaul has based much of this novel on his own years in Africa, and his account is consistently troubling, but "A Bend in the River" deserves to be read . . . maybe more than once."
"Don't let the page number fool you, this book is long! But after you resign yourself to the fact that anything of real interest that happens in the character's life will only be briefly mentioned in passing during long descriptions of where and with whom he had lunch on any given day, it's interesting enough. Another reviewer said they were told to read it as if the book itself was a river. I guess that's a good description of my reading this book. Just drifting through Salim's life in the bush, from time to time seeing something off in the distance that could be facinating--murder, a bloody uprising, illegal smuggling--but nevermind, now it's gone and we're still drifting along...
I felt as though Naipaul got his social-political message across through pretty well in the first third of the book(up unto which time I was enjoying the book well enough). Then used the rest of the book to say it over, and over, and over again. There is so little character development that I really began to wonder why Naipaul bothered with a novel, and didn't just put it all into a couple of essays and been done with it.
I guess I can see Naipaul's supposed genius in writing a book that requires the reader to endure the same feelings echoed in the book for Salim--just "carry on". But it doesn't really make for a very engrossing read."
"Naipaul has a quiet voice but one which is rich in its telling of a story. He is a wonderful observer of the human condition, although terribly depressing.
The story is about a young man, of Indian descent, making way as a tradesman in an unnamed African trading town. Similar to A House for Mr. Biswah, the characters are varied and extend from all strata of society-from servants to the elite, but all fall victims to overwhelming political tides. While I was initially depressed for people in Arica and other places living under such terrible regimes, I also came to understand that while my own situation is better than that of a Naipaul character, his point is that we are really all helpless in a our struggle against the great tides.
Naipaul also has some wonderful great lines that make you think. His description of psychological impact of airplane travel is one which I found especially interesting. Overall, Naipaul is too good of a writer to not enjoy this book and so I rate it well."
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