A Bend in the River: V.S. Naipaul

V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River has long been one of the most controversial novels written about contemporary Africa. Though based on Mobutu Sese Seko’s rule of the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the 1970s, it tackles issues that still bedevil the continent today and is often cited by Naipaul’s critics and detractors as evidence of his inherent pessimism concerning the future of Africa and indeed much of the post-colonial ‘Third World’. This Focus book considers some of those criticisms of the novel and assesses their validity.

About the author:

John Harding lives and works in North London and writes on a variety of topics, ranging from literary and sporting biography to cultural history and criticism. He is at present working on a study of the playwright Shelagh Delaney. Harding has written Dreaming of Babylon (a biography of the poet Ralph Hodgson), edited Hodgson’s poems in ‘The Last Blackbird’ and Other Poems and produced a Student Guide on the work of the novelist Patrick Hamilton, all of which are published by Greenwich Exchange.

58  pages

ISBN: 978-1-906075-74-3