Africa. Some time in the recent past, before so much of the continent became "closed down or. . . full of blood." Somewhere in the interior, a rebellion-flattened town in a country that, "like others in Africa, had had its troubles after independence." To this ghost town at the bend in the great river comes the narrator, Salim, an Indian from East Africa who has bought the town's makeshift general store from a fellow Indian; and history-watcher Naipaul uses Salim's stay as the springboard for a meditation on the uncertain progress of post-colonial black Africa. It turns out that Salim has timed his purchase well: he's there at the start of a post-rebellion boom, as the new "Big Man" president in the capital plans big, modern things for the country. Salim's entrepreneur friend, an elderly Indian, acquires the Bigburger franchise for the town. A wasteland a few miles away is transformed into "the Domain"—a university city/research center that attracts European advisers, including an Africa expert ("the Big Man's white man") whose French wife has an unlovely, uninteresting affair with Salim. And Salim begins to feel part of the country, inspired by the Big Man even while seeing that it's all a hoax: "to understand the President's purpose was to be affected by it." But massive disillusion will set in, of course, as the Big Man fails to follow through and bloodthirsty youth squads spring up in the bush. All foreigners are endangered by a new "radicalization" policy: Salim loses his store and saves his skin only because of his friendship with a young black—son of one of Salim's market-woman customers—who is now a faceless, uniformed official after having gone through all the roles of a "new man of Africa." Naipaul's gloomy vision of post-colonial Africa is sure to attract interest, especially since it creepily coincides with his brother Shiva's far less compassionate African journey, North of South (p. 371). But, though the Naipaul prose here is as gracefully moody as ever, the interplay between think-book and novel-of-character doesn't work at all: Salim remains an uninvolving personality throughout, and the cross-cultural themes are carved out much too thickly—often in long chunks of dialogue. This should have been an essay, perhaps, and one or two short stories; as a novel, it's listless—as a framework for ideas, it's never less than provocative.
Pub Date: May 16, 1979
ISBN: 0679722025
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1979
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
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