At the bend of the great river

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At the bend of the great river is a novel by VS Naipaul published in 1979 in the original English under the title A Bend in the River . The book is divided into four chapters with a total of seventeen sections. The focus of the action is Salim, son of a Muslim merchant family from India who have lived on the coast of East Africa for generations . Robert McCrum tops the work in his list of the 100 best English-language novels compiled for the Guardian .

action

In 1980 the novel was published in a German translation. He begins with the following words: “ The world is what it is; People who are nothing, who allow themselves to be nothing, have no place in it. “Salim buys from his friend Nazruddin a general store selling copybooks , razor blades, soap, toothpaste , cloth, iron pots and enameled plates in a town at the bend of a great river in Central Africa . He drives for several days in an old Peugeot from the east coast of Africa to the middle of the African continent.

Nazruddin is about twenty years older than Salim. He speaks French, wears dark glasses and suits, plays tennis and drinks wine . Based on the descriptions of Naipaul, one can assume that the city is Kisangani , formerly Stanleyville, in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo . The city, with over half a million inhabitants in 2010, lies at the end of an old Arab trade route to Central Africa. Naipaul describes the city as an important place in the history of Islam in Africa . This is where European-American Africa researchers and simple merchants from Europe met the Islamic world. The Islamic expansion to Africa was temporarily stopped in this city at the source of the Congo and until today it seems to have only been a pioneer for the culture of Europe.

Salim's decision to emigrate proves to be the right one. In the meantime, the Africans on the east coast have bloodily risen against the immigrants from India, who have often lived there for hundreds of years. He receives letters from family members explaining that the life of his relatives on the east coast of Africa has ended forever.

One of his first customers is Zabeth , an African trader from a small African fishing village far away. She later gives her fifteen-year-old son Ferdinand into the care of Salim. He can live with Salim for a small fee and from the colonial era coming school visit the city.

In the fourth section of the novel, Salim goes to high school. He meets the Belgian Father Huismans . The father is around forty years old and an eccentric. In his free time he devotes himself to African masks and other cultic wood carvings. Salim and Huismans start a conversation. When asked about the motto of the Ex Africa high school semper aliquid novi, Pliny the Elder's words about Africa still apply . The priest has long been recognized for taking care of African art. But he has little interest in current social and political issues in Africa. He explains the world to his students in the great historical period from the Roman Empire to the present day. Unfortunately he is killed by strangers in the bush.

On the outskirts of the African city, the president of the imaginary Central African state is building a state domain. It is intended to document that modern people live in Africa after the end of colonization. One day Salim receives a visit from Indar , his childhood friend, in his shop . He lives as a guest of the government in the state domain. At a party there, Salim also meets the manager of the company Raymond and his wife Yvette , who is thirty years his junior . Salim had only had erotic experiences with prostitutes so far . With Yvette's European ideas of love and passion, he is breaking new ground. Yvette dances with Salim. Later they meet regularly at noon and in the evening and make love.

At some point riots break out again in the city. Salim travels to London to see Nazruddin for six weeks . After detours via Uganda and Canada, Nazruddin had settled in London. There he is with Nazruddins daughter Kareisha engaged .

Arriving in London, Salim realizes that the Europe of his childhood ideas that dominates the world with its buildings and other achievements no longer exists. It was, Naipaul continues, the Europe of his childhood that explained the world to him with postage stamps.

After staying in London, Salim flies back to the city in Africa to sell his business. The Great Man recommended a further radicalization of the local population, what he called this, towards foreigners. Salim is arrested and his general store nationalized.

Ferdinand, the son of Zabeth the trader, is now a senior civil servant. He speaks out for Salim. He can then leave the country with the help of a Congo river steamer, almost destitute.

Motives and reception

In this book, Naipaul takes a very critical look at Islam and its extremist currents. In the 15th chapter he lets one of the protagonists, the merchant Nazruddin, reason:

I am superstitious about the Arabs. They have given religion to us and half the world, but I can't help but feel that terrible things are about to happen in the world when they leave Arabia.

On the other hand, Naipaul, who was born in Trinidad with Indian roots and now lives in London, can take an impartial, neutral point of view towards world events with his outside view.

In the bibliographical note on the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naipaul in 2001, the Swedish Academy points out that the novel is compared to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness . Anant Kumar understands the interest of the western world in the book insofar as it is not the usual minorities who are fleeing persecution, but rather an Indian generation of traders fleeing from native African people first into the interior of Africa.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ VS Naipaul: At the bend of the great river: Roman / Dt. by Karin Graf, Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl., 1993, p. 5
  2. ↑ VS Naipaul: At the bend of the great river: Roman / Dt. by Karin Graf, Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl., 1993, p. 24
  3. ↑ VS Naipaul: At the bend of the great river: Roman / Dt. by Karin Graf, Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl., 1993, p. 69
  4. ↑ VS Naipaul: At the bend of the great river: Roman / Dt. by Karin Graf, Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl., 1993, p. 259
  5. ↑ VS Naipaul: At the bend of the great river: Roman / Dt. by Karin Graf, Munich: Dt. Taschenbuch-Verl., 1993, p. 265
  6. ↑ FAZ : It's okay to think badly of me , viewed on January 24, 2011
  7. ^ Svenska Academies: The Nobel Prize in Literature 2001 VS Naipaul - Bibliographical Notes , accessed January 25, 2011
  8. ↑ interculture journal: Anant Kumar - The empire strikes back: the postcolonial Indian literature from the outside in , viewed on January 25, 2011