Africa is the setting for several of V. S. Naipaul’s finest fictional stories — In a Free State, A Bend in the River, Half a Life.
Africa is the setting for several of V. S. Naipaul’s finest fictional stories — In a Free State, A Bend in the River, Half a Life. And there is a pattern to the themes in the African works: fear, post-colonial disintegration, isolation, approaching catastrophe, a sense of being trapped in a way of life that is hovering on the borders of savagery. It is an unforgettable vision, but it remains that of an outsider.
In The Masque of Africa, Naipaul goes deeper; this is the account of a journey through five countries with the purpose of ‘investigating the effects of African belief on the progress of civilisation’. As befits reportage, the style is clipped, sometimes cursory, as though written for a notebook, which may give readers the hope that this could become the prelude to a novel. Meanwhile it has its own value as an investigation into the least discussed aspect of African society today.
Naipaul starts in Uganda, because he once knew this country best. He lived there in 1966 and now says that he remembered it as a rather beautiful country with an independent future, and clear evidence of pre- colonial civilisation. This time he was appalled by what he found. The roads had fallen to pieces, the garbage lay uncollected, the trim bungalows had disappeared beneath piles of corrugated iron shacks, which were crammed together and falling down. The green hills he remembered so well were built over. ‘It seemed to me I was in a place where a calamity had occurred,’ he says. In 1966 the Ugandan population had numbered 5 million.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in