A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Bend in the River #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1979. Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small, growing city in the country's remote interior. Though born and raised in another country in a more cosmopolitan city on the coast during the colonial period, as neither European nor fully African, Salim... observes the rapid changes in his homeland with an outsider's distance. One critic thinks it represents "the gradual darkening of African society as it returns to its age-old condition of bush and blood" and thinks this pessimistic response shows Naipaul's "inability to examine postcolonial societies in any depth" Naipaul credits an extramarital affair for giving A Bend in the River and his later books greater fluidity, saying these "in a way to some extent depend on her . They stopped being dry.
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| Author: | V.S. Naipaul |
| Genre: | Novel, Fiction |
| Year published: | 1979 |
| Number of editions: | 11 |