Committee indicated that it viewed Naipaul as Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. In Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad presented a dark picture of the same region at the beginning of European colonization; this type of depiction of Africa is also found recast in Naipaul's novel. Like Conrad, who in Heart of Darkness does not name the big river, Naipaul does not name the river in this novel, nor the town at its bend, nor the country or its president. Yet there are possible identifiers. Thus the reader learns that the town is located in the heart of Africa, at the end of the navigable river, just below the cataracts, and the European colonisers had been French-speaking, perhaps Belgians. Naipaul's description has been interpreted to point to the town of Kisangani on the Congo river. A link between the "Big Man" and President Mobutu of Zaire was drawn by some reviewers. Naipaul credits his extramarital affair with Margaret Gooding for giving A Bend in the River and his later books greater fluidity, saying that these "in a way to some extent depend on her. They stopped being dry.” A Bend in the River was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but did not win; it is discussed by two characters in The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, which did win the prize, in 2006. References Bibliography External links Literary Encyclopedia entry 1979 British novels Novels by V. S. Naipaul Alfred A. Knopf books Novels set in Africa