Mapped
A Bend in the River
V. S. Naipaul
Salim, a Muslim of Indian descent, buys a shop in a town at a bend of the great river in the interior of a newly independent central African country, and watches the fragile post-colonial order rise and rot under the rule of the Big Man. Naipaul's unnamed town is drawn from Kisangani on the Congo: the river and its choking water hyacinths, the market and the shop, the Big Man's shiny new Domain on the edge of the bush, and the far-off capital from which power and terror flow.
5 places →
A House for Mr Biswas
V. S. Naipaul
One man's lifelong search for a house of his own, across colonial Trinidad. The map runs from the sugar country of Caroni where Mohun Biswas is born, through the market town of Chaguanas and the family compound he marries into, to the capital, Port of Spain, and the small house in St James that is finally his.
6 places →