A Bend in the River

Salim, an Indian Muslim from a trading community on Africa's east coast, narrates V. S. Naipaul's novel of an unnamed African country after independence. Uneasy about his future, he buys a shop from Nazruddin in a remote town at a bend in a great river and sells pots, pans, pencils and paper to villagers. He finds the town decaying, its old European quarter reclaimed by the bush, under a new President whose crude energy reaches even this isolated place. As he builds his business, Salim is drawn into the shifting, dangerous politics of the new state, where remnants of the old regime clash with the new. Published in 1979, it was shortlisted for that year's Booker Prize.

It appears on a list of novels and poetry collections linked to Barack Obama's reading over the years.