The novel is setting is the interior of an unnamed East African nation during the 1960s-70s: a time following an upheaval of the government. What follows is the periphery of the coups, insurrection, and despotism of the region during that era. Salim, an Indian Muslim from the coast, has purchased, after the first rebellion, a business in the western reaches of the country: at a bend in the river that has become a trading center. The object of a businessman, we are reminded, is to make a small profit on investment and to know when to sell out before politics and dissonance change the plain of the playing field. But, for a foreigner there is only one way out.
Deep meditative thoughts enmeshed in a compelling narrative told by a shopkeeper in Africa, located at a bend in the river, Naipaul grasps one's basic need to belong . . . and the struggle to survive our ever present state of man's inhumanity to man.
