V. S. Naipaul · 1979 · river

V. S. Naipaul's 1979 novel. Salim, an Indian Muslim from the East African coast, drives inland to buy a shop in a town at the bend of a great river in the heart of a newly independent African country. As the Big Man's regime tightens and the interior convulses with change and violence, Salim watches a fragile world remake and unmake itself at the center of the continent.

1. 1
   East African coast

   The Indian Ocean coast where Salim's family has traded for generations, and which he leaves - driving inland across the continent - to make his own future.

2. 2
   The town

   The town at the bend of the great river in the African interior, where Salim buys a shop and watches the newly independent nation lurch between hope, tyranny and collapse.