from the Introduction by Patrick Marnham
V. S. Naipaul lived in Africa for just nine months. He subsequently set three of his novels in fictional African countries and his last book was the account of a journey in search of African belief.
In 1950, at the age of 18, he had left his home in Trinidad to read English at University College, Oxford, and he did not return home for six years. He never lived in Trinidad again. After university he was offered a job, with the BBC Colonial Service and it was then that his first novel The Mystic Masseur was published. In 1961 he won an international reputation with what he called his “breakthrough book”, A House for Mr Biswas, a comic tour de force set in Port of Spain where he had grown up. After that he abandoned the Caribbean background, finding it too narrow, and most of his subsequent writing was inspired by his journeys in Latin America, India and Africa, in search of what he called “the great world”. His connection with Africa had come by chance - part of his “luck” as he termed it. In 1966 he had been offered a position as writer in residence at Makerere University in Uganda, then one of the leading universities on the African continent.
Uganda four years after independence still had a bright future. It was regarded as a ‘developing society’, but it had preserved a superficially coherent ruling structure. In many African countries the move from colony to sovereign state, often accompanied by insurrection and bloodshed, had been too rapid. The continent was in a state of chaotic transition. Whereas some countries such as Senegal and the Ivory Coast were peaceful and reasonably prosperous, others were already on the point of collapse. Naipaul arrived in Kampala at a critical moment. Within weeks the prime minister of Uganda, Milton Obote, staged a coup and declared himself to be the executive president. In the fighting that followed over a thousand people were killed. Makerere continued to function but Naipaul was appalled by what he described as the international community’s “castrated reaction” to the violence. Obote - who had been educated by Protestant missionaries and was a university graduate – was regarded by the political scientists and international analysts as a potentially progressive influence. Naipaul immediately saw him for what he was, a brutal despot, and was angered by the African experts’ ready endorsement of the new regime.
Towards the end of his year at Makerere, on a trip through Rwanda to the Congo border, Naipaul had a glimpse of the devastation left by the long-fought conflicts that had followed Congolese Independence in 1960. In an uprising known as the “Simba rebellion”, in August 1964, a rebel army had appeared out of the forest and occupied about one-third of the Congo taking the regional capital of Stanleyville. 2500 government supporters had been massacred in the town centre and over 2000 European residents were held hostage. The ‘Simba’ warriors were often armed with little more than magic amulets and drugs, but they believed themselves invincible. In the bush white people were hunted down and systematically killed. Nuns were raped and murdered, missionaries were tortured and chopped to pieces. It took an international force of mercenaries armed with jet fighter and bombers and Belgian paratroopers to free the hostages, many of whom died. The ‘Simbas’, still believing in their magic, melted away into the forest, sometimes taking refuge in either Rwanda or Uganda. The horror was still fresh in people’s minds when Naipaul set off on his tour.
One day he came across a place called Gisenyi, on the shores of Lake Kivu. This had been a holiday resort for prosperous Europeans. But in the tribal fighting that followed Rwandan independence this place too had been destroyed. The entire town had collapsed and was returning to bush. Naipaul noticed that despite this it was still inhabited. People were crouched in the shadows “trying to recreate the hut life” within the wreckage of modern
