A Bend in the River by V.S. Naipaul, first published in 1979
Spoiler Alert: Plot Summary
A Bend in the River is a tale of displacement, where we follow Salim as he finds and loses himself in cycles as an expat in Central Africa. (To be clear, I'll continue to refer to this country he's in as central Africa, because he does not name it as a specific country, but references nearby countries like Uganda. In my head I imagined it loosely as taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but that was just a placeholder in my mind.) Salim seems to be Indian by origin, but has long lived on our near the east coast of Africa, for reasons that were sort of unclear. Salim comes to a small town at a bend in the river in central Africa to take over the running of a small shop that used to belong to a family friend, Nazruddin. During the book, only about a year takes place, but the town transitions into a rebellion, a new governance structure, another rebellion, a takeover, and yet another leadership change, all reflections of the greater country's happenings. Salim has only a few friends, fellow expats Shoba and Mahesh, a couple, and later Yvette and Raymond. Most of the characters we interact with are not African by birth, with the exception of Zabeth, a female trader that Salim interacts with and sells to, and her son, Ferdinand, who attends the local school. Salim's former family servant, Metty, is sent to live with him, and they live together in a sort of wary and uneasy peace. When things get messy for maybe the third time, Salim tries moving to London and plans to marry Nazruddin's daughter, Kareisha, which has long been the plan, but he tires of the city and feels out of place so he returns to his town, only to find that it is not safe for him, so the final scene follows Salim as he departs secretly on a nighttime barge, floating down the river.
Spoiler Over: Continue Here
My dear blobbists,
I know. I have been away for an extended period. Again. My excuse is that I keep getting caught up reading summer book bingo lists, like this one, and reading those 20+ books distracts me from reading my blob list. Also, I made the mistake of putting this book into the book bingo square "Read While Outside", and then I never wanted to be outside again because it was SO HOT and humid. So after reading this book in the car with the windows down by my gym, at a remote camping site on a farm that turned out to be rather overrun with mice, and at a beach where it was so windy I couldn't concentrate, I finally caved and let myself finish it in the comfort of the indoors. It'll be our little secret.
Oh, and in case there are typos in this post, let it be known that I am down a finger temporarily. Suffice it to say that one should be very careful after replacing one's rotary cutter blade. Now off we go!
I enjoyed this book, albeit sort of in the way one enjoys a long epic tone poem. It's beautifully written, and full of complex and thoughtful reflections on the world, but as far as plot goes, simultaneously a lot and very little takes place. The village goes through multiple rebellions, people are murdered and executed and affairs take place, but Salim also kind of floats noiselessly along through the ether, which gives everything a sort of surreal vibe. I have never been to any of the countries in Africa, so I have no reference to compare his reflections to, but it felt like a realistic outsider's portrayal to me.
On time
I think this was the first book I've read where someone is not of a culture/country they're inhabiting, but also not trying to colonialize or take over the culture/country they're inhabiting, which is part of what makes this book feel special, I think. It's really a kind of observer's experience, but it doesn't pretend to be journalistic, or telling you the definitive truth. We just simply see the world as Salim does. Here's a line I loved that gets at this:
The ruins, spreading over so many acres, seemed to speak of a final catastrophe. But the civilization wasn't dead. It was the civilization I existed in and in fact was still working towards. And that could make for an odd feeling: to be among the ruins was to have your time-sense unsettled. You felt like a ghost, not from the past, but from the future. You felt that your life and ambition had already been lived out for you and you were looking at the relics of that life. You were in a place where the future had come and gone.
On rebellions and neutrality
While the content of the book is heavy, and at times, quite dark, there's a certain eloquence in how Salim sees it. Here are a few lines I think capture this well.
- The second rebellion: Having destroyed their town, they had grieved for it. They had wished to see it a living place again. And seeing it come to a kind of life again, they had grown afraid once more.
- In post-colonial Africa everybody could get guns; every tribe could be a warrior tribe.
- The rage of the rebels was like a rage against metal, machinery, wires, everything that was not of the forest and Africa.
- No, in this war, I was neutral. I was frightened of both sides.
- In the beginning, before the arrival of the white men, I had considered myself neutral. I had wanted neither side to win, neither the army nor the rebels. As it turned out, both sides lost.
On dancing
Salim kind of falls under the spell of Yvette and Raymond, who have close ties to the then-President of the country, and I loved this scene where Salim goes to a dinner party at their house: I had never been in a room where men and women danced for mutual pleasure, and out of pleasure in one another's company.
It made me wonder if he had been in other kinds of dancing rooms, and what those rooms would have looked like.
On fluidity
There are many reasons why I can't imagine myself stepping into Salim's shoes, but this description of life is one of the big ones:
But in the town, where all was arbitrary and the law was what it was, all our lives were fluid. We none of us had certainties of any kind. Without always knowing what we were doing, we were constantly adjusting to the arbitrariness by which we where surrounded. In the end we couldn't say where we stood.
On travelling to London
I loved hearing Salim's reflections in London, in part because he feels as out of place, or perhaps more out of place, than he did at the small town in the bend of the river.
I woke up in London with little bits of Africa on me - like the airport tax ticket, given by an official I knew, in the middle of another crowd, in another kind of building, in another climate. Both places were real; both places were unreal.
Indar had said about people like me that when we came to a great city we closed our eyes; we were concerned only to show that we were not amazed. I love this line.
On seizing opportunities to see beauty
Salim is often reflecting during one period what he will do in another: During the days of the rebellion I had had the sharpest sense of the beauty of the river and the forest, and had promised myself that when the peace came I would expose myself to it, learn it, possess that beauty. I had done nothing of the sort; when the peace came I had simply stopped looking about me. And now I felt that the mystery and the magic of the place had gone. How true is this for you, reader? Do you make promises to see something for all that it is in one moment, but when you have the chance, forget your promise? I know I do.
Lines I Liked
I pulled these lines out at random, but now that I see them in a stream, they make a kind of digested chronology, which I like.
- But this is madness. I am going in the wrong direction. There can't be a new life at the end of this.
- We felt in our bones that we were a very old people; but we seemed to have no means of gauging the passing of time.
- All I could do was to hide from the truth.
- I couldn't protect anyone. No one could protect me.
- I could be master of my fate only if I stood alone.
- What you must always know is when to get out.
- When you get away from the chiefs and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa: everyone is a villager.
- Africa was big. The bush muffled the sound of murder, and the muddy rivers and lakes washed the blood away.
- The bush runs itself.
- I felt burdened by the bareness of my days. I feel this acutely right now. Something's missing, and I'm still trying to figure out what.
- Who wanted philosophy or faith for the good times? We could all cope with the good times. It was for the bad that we had to be equipped. #facts
- I knew that I had travelled far, and I wondered how I had had the courage to live for so long in a place so far away. I've felt this when I lived in NH, and in France.
- All that had happened in the past was washed away; there was always only the present. It was as though, as a result of some disturbance in the heavens, the early morning light was always receding into the darkness, and men lived in a perpetual dawn.
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