A Bend In The River
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the heart of a newly independent African nation, where the jungle presses against the edges of a river town and the old colonial order has collapsed into something far more volatile, a young Indian-African trader named Salim sets up shop and attempts to build a life amid the wreckage of history. V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River, first published in 1979, is a searing chronicle of postcolonial Africa — a world in which idealism curdles into authoritarianism, and where the promise of independence gives way to a Big Man's cult of personality and a society perpetually on the edge of violence. Naipaul writes with a spare, unsentimental precision that strips away romantic illusions about both Africa and the Western world that looms over it. Through Salim's wary, outsider gaze, the novel presents a portrait of displacement and moral ambiguity that resonates far beyond its specific setting, illustrating how fragile civilization truly is when stripped of its familiar scaffolding. Hailed by the *Observer* as brilliant and terrifying, this is a masterwork of late 20th-century literature that leaves the reader haunted by its final, devastating image — and asking what, if anything, survives the tide of history.
Author: V. S. Naipaul
Format: Paperback
Genre: Modern fiction
Condition remarks:
Book: Fair
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Yellowed
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
At the heart of a newly independent African nation, where the jungle presses against the edges of a river town and the old colonial order has collapsed into something far more volatile, a young Indian-African trader named Salim sets up shop and attempts to build a life amid the wreckage of history. V. S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River, first published in 1979, is a searing chronicle of postcolonial Africa — a world in which idealism curdles into authoritarianism, and where the promise of independence gives way to a Big Man's cult of personality and a society perpetually on the edge of violence. Naipaul writes with a spare, unsentimental precision that strips away romantic illusions about both Africa and the Western world that looms over it. Through Salim's wary, outsider gaze, the novel presents a portrait of displacement and moral ambiguity that resonates far beyond its specific setting, illustrating how fragile civilization truly is when stripped of its familiar scaffolding. Hailed by the *Observer* as brilliant and terrifying, this is a masterwork of late 20th-century literature that leaves the reader haunted by its final, devastating image — and asking what, if anything, survives the tide of history.