The Bend in the River

Zusatztext "For sheer abundance of talent! there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V.S. Naipaul." — The New York Times Book Review "Confirms Naipaul's position as one of the best writers now at work." —Walter Clemons! Newsweek "The sweep of Naipaul's imagination! the brilliant fictional frame that expresses it! are in my view without equal today." —Elizabeth Hardwick Informationen zum Autor V.S. NAIPAUL was born in Trinidad in 1932. He came to England on a scholarship in 1950. He spent four years at University College, Oxford, and began to write, in London, in 1954. He pursued no other profession.   His novels include A House for Mr Biswas , The Mimic Men , Guerrillas , A Bend in the River , and The Enigma of Arrival . In 1971 he was awarded the Booker Prize for In a Free State . His works of nonfiction, equally acclaimed, include Among the Believers , Beyond Belief , The Masque of Africa , and a trio of books about India: An Area of Darkness , India: A Wounded Civilization and India: A Million Mutinies Now .   In 1990, V.S. Naipaul received a knighthood for services to literature; in 1993, he was the first recipient of the David Cohen British Literature Prize. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001. He lived with his wife Nadira and cat Augustus in Wiltshire, and died in 2018. Klappentext In the "brilliant novel" (The New York Times) V.S. Naipaul takes us deeply into the life of one man—an Indian who, uprooted by the bloody tides of Third World history, has come to live in an isolated town at the bend of a great river in a newly independent African nation. Naipaul gives us the most convincing and disturbing vision yet of what happens in a place caught between the dangerously alluring modern world and its own tenacious past and traditions.from the Introduction by Patrick Marnham   V. S. Naipaul lived in Africa for just nine months.  He subsequently set three of his novels in fictional African countries and his last book was the account of a journey in search of African belief. In 1950, at the age of 18, he had left his home in Trinidad to read English at University College, Oxford, and he did not return home for six years. He never lived in Trinidad again. After university he was offered a job, with the BBC Colonial Service and it was then that his first novel The Mystic Masseur was published.  In 1961 he won an international reputation with what he called his “breakthrough book”, A House for Mr Biswas, a comic tour de force set in Port of Spain where he had grown up.  After that he abandoned the Caribbean background, finding it too narrow, and most of his subsequent writing was inspired by his journeys in Latin America, India and Africa, in search of what he called “the great world”.  His connection with Africa had come by chance - part of his “luck” as he termed it.  In 1966 he had been offered a position as writer in residence at Makerere University in Uganda, then one of the leading universities on the African continent. Uganda four years after independence still had a bright future.  It was regarded as a ‘developing society’, but it had preserved a superficially coherent ruling structure. In many African countries the move from colony to sovereign state, often accompanied by insurrection and bloodshed, had been too rapid.   The continent was in a state of chaotic transition.  Whereas some countries such as Senegal and the Ivory Coast were peaceful and reasonably prosperous, others were already on the point of collapse.  Naipaul arrived in Kampala at a critical moment.  Within weeks the prime minister of Uganda, Milton Obote, staged a coup and declared himself to be the executive president. In the fighting that followed over a thousand people were killed. Makerere continued to function but Naipaul was ...

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"For sheer abundance of talent, there can hardly be a writer alive who surpasses V.S. Naipaul." The New York Times Book Review

"A brilliant novel." The New York Times

"Confirms Naipaul's position as one of the best writers now at work." Newsweek

"The sweep of Naipaul's imagination, the brilliant fictional frame that expresses it, are in my view without equal today." Elizabeth Hardwick

Product details

• Authors: V. S. Naipaul, V.S. Naipaul, Vidiadhar S. Naipaul, V.S. Naipul
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 13.03.1989
• EAN: 9780679722021
• ISBN: 978-0-679-72202-1
• No. of pages: 288
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 202 mm x 15 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature