Exile as the major condition of life is a central theme in Naipaul's A Bend in the River. (p. 100)

Naipaul implies [in the novel] that there is a conflict between change and stasis which is always in equilibrium, so that nothing can progress and nothing can stay still. In the image of the water hyacinths which clog the river, so newly arrived from nowhere that they have no name, Naipaul suggests that state of restless fixation as peculiarly African, as totally beyond human control.

The novel is circular in its movement, almost musical in its arrangement. Not only themes, but phrases repeat and expand in the course of its development. The Latin motto recurs, growing in irony. "The world is what it is," which opens the book, reappears throughout it while the world which is, changes. And the repeated journey out of the jungle becomes, sooner or later...