A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul. The novel, telling the story of Salim, a merchant in post-colonial mid-20th century Africa, is one of Naipaul's best known works and was widely praised. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked A Bend in the River #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. A Bend in the River has also been criticized for a perceived defence of European colonialism in Africa. Plot Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small but growing city in the country's remote interior. Salim observes the rapid changes in Africa with an outsider's distance. Salim grows up in the community of Indian traders on the east coast of Africa. Feeling insecure about his future in East Africa, he buys a business from Nazruddin in a town at "a bend in the river" in the heart of Africa. When he moves there he finds the town decrepit, a "ghost town", its former European suburb reclaimed by the bush, and many of its European vestiges ruined in a "rage" by the locals in response to their suppression and humiliation during colonial times. Old tribal distinctions have become important again. Salim trades in what people in the villages need: pencils and paper, pots and pans, other household utensils. Soon he is joined by an assistant, Metty, who comes from a family of house slaves his family had maintained in the east. One of his steady customers is Zabeth, a "marchande" from a village and a magician too. Zabeth has a son, Ferdinand, by a man of another tribe, and asks Salim to help him get educated. Ferdinand attends the local lycée run by Father Huismans, a Belgian priest who collects African masks and is considered a "lover of Africa". Life in the town is slowly improving. Salim's decision to move there seems to be vindicated when he learns that the Indian community on the east coast is being persecuted, but he still does not feel secure. Mahesh says of the local Africans that "they are malins", "because they lived with the knowledge of men as prey". A rebellion breaks out and the Indian merchants live in fear. Soon white mercenaries appear