A colleague wrote:
Thanks for the review of the above by Samir Rahim...very revealing and generous, given the racist rubbish Naipaul is now producing on whatever he thinks fit. I suppose being a Nobel-man and having a demanding new wife (born and brought up in Mombasa but now a Pakistani) means a strain on the purse. And to pay for the couple's recent African safari, he had to produce something. The section on South Africa is particualrly vitriolic because his Mrs. was out-smarted by Winnie in a brutally elegant manner in an interview which Winnie used to verbalise a few messages of her own about the state of affairs in Mandela-land.
This being said, in the late 1960s , Naipaul spent a year at Makerere in its golden age and then produced 2 books which were and remain very readable and perceptive albeit inspired by his usual contempt for his subject matter. The book on Uganda called "A Free State" is a very powerful evocation of what was waiting in the wings for that country... namely the arrival of the grotesqueIdi Amin...written before the event. The second book, "A Bend in the River" is set in Zaire and rips into the Indian trader minority with a mean scalpel... inter alia.
But that was then. For the last 2-3 decades, the contempt has turned poisonous and universal and it covers everything he is and all he sees and is now the reason for his existence as a writer...and as Sir Vidya. His books are now as nasty and sick-making as he himself is...and always was.
Read him if you must, but then be sure to give yourself a good scrub in a very efficient sauna.
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