Africa has become remote again, a mystery to be explained—at which point enter V. S. Naipaul with a book of wonderful authority and wisdom [A Bend in the River]. (p. 791)

In the sense that the narrative is conceived essentially as a political pageant in which a parvenu attempts to impose order on chaos, or rather a new chaos on the old. Naipaul's book might be said to be deficient in the conventional tensions of fiction. The interrelationships of the characters are nebulous, their development speculative; most of them are archetypes rather than individuals….

But the most ambivalent characters of all are the narrator, Salim, an Indian merchant; his inherited servant, Metty, and his old friend, Indar. They are Africans and yet not Africans; circumstances have pushed them inland from the rim of the continent, and they cling to their distinctive identity…. All of them move along among...