The idea of migration, diaspora and hopelessness in Naipaul’s ‘A Bend in the River’ BISWADEEP BASU College

Like his other writings ‘In a Free State’ and ‘Guerrillas’, ‘A Bend in the River’ portrays the condition of expatriates or migrants adrift in a state of disorder. The background threatens a grim idea of civil disturbance and the irrational political power play. This novel is an outcome of Naipaul’s travels in Zaire in 1975 and his Congo Diary and "A New King for the Congo: Mobutu and the Nihilism of Africa". Naipaul also presents the conflict between European civilization and the African chaos and disorder through decolonialization. Unfortunately, Europe is a hopeless refuge to all migrants from different colonies.

Naipaul bases his novel in a nameless region in Africa. His narrator is Salim, an East African Muslim of Indian origin. Salim is an optimistic man. He feels that “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.”. As a result he buys a small shop in a bend in the river with lot of hope and optimism. But gradually his hope fades as the vision of a postcolonial country fades with time. When Salim settles in his new place, he notices the battle for independence and power in the ruins of a commercial city. He observes how the town remains suspended between a...