Books like A Bend in the River

This book is as much a story of what it was like living in a newly independent country in Africa in the 1960’s - 1970’s as it is a novel. The book has memorable opening lines: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”The main character is a Hindu from a well-off family, originally from India by way of eastern Africa but now settled on the west coast. He buys a store from his uncle and moves a week’s journey upriver and inland, toward the east. The family has slaves that they are ‘responsible for’ so when he moves inland he has to take a young man, a slave, with him, even though he’d rather leave him behind. His store sells household goods to the locals as well as to those who arrived by the big weekly riverboat and by dugout canoes from the interior. A lot of the town, located at a bend in the river, is burned and in ruins but he and his uncle are confident it will come back. Those who are left in town are like a mini-United Nations: most of the businesses are owned by Arabs, Indians, Belgians, Greeks and Portuguese. But it’s not a melting pot. A major theme is that everyone is of ‘two worlds.” Like the main character being of Indian and African ancestry. And the Africans from the bush are halfway between the bush world and that of the town. The town starts to thrive again and even gets an international burger chain restaurant. The main character befriends a young man whose mother is a trader by dugout. She wants her son to stay in town to get an education. Much of the story concerns his relationship with these two young men who work in his store. The country is run by an African leader. The bizarre behaviors of the African leader provide some humor and horror. The President’s PR person lives in the town with his wife (they are British) but he appears to have fallen from favor with the President. (Eventually the main character has an affair with the man’s wife.) The President uses white Belgian mercenaries to do some of his dirty work. When he decides he wants a change of leadership in the local military garrison, the Belgians come to town and go into the garrison and kill the African commanders. The President creates a type of prep school in the town, to which the African boy from the bush is admitted. But eventually the President loses interest in it and the school falls into disrepair. The President hires a white man to travel with him through the country and always be the first off the boat or train to run out into the crowd and ‘draw off the evil.’ The President makes his mother a universal symbol of womanhood and turns her into a cult figure in a process like a form of Mariolatry.Eventually the main character’s business is ‘nationalized.’ He is still employed as the manager but the firm is now run by an African appointed by the President. He knows it’s time to get out so he starts smuggling gold and elephant tusks on the side and stashing his money in an international bank so he can get out on a moment’s notice – which in the end, he barely does. There is good writing and big thoughts: “The Europeans wanted gold and slaves like everybody else; but at the same time they wanted statues put up to themselves as people who had done good things for the slaves….they got both the slaves and the statues.”Of the Africans living in the forests: “I knew other things about the forest kingdom, though. I knew that the slave people were in revolt and were being butchered back into submission. But Africa was big. The bush muffled the sound of murder, and the muddy rivers and lakes washed the blood away.”“It isn’t that there’s no right and wrong here. There is no right.” There are stereotypes of Africans such as of a young man who is employed in a restaurant. “Yet as soon as he was left alone he became a different person. He went vacant. Not rude, just vacant. It made you feel that while they did their jobs in various glossy settings, they were only acting for the people who employed them…the job itself was meaningless to them…”All in all I found it fascinating. A good read that kept my attention all the way through while I learned a lot. I’m adding it to my favorites. Photo of the author (1932-2018) from bbc.com