  '''''A Bend in the River''''' is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.   In 1998, the Modern Library ranked ''A Bend in the River'' #83 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1979.  ==Plot== Set in an unnamed African country after independence, the book is narrated by Salim, an ethnically Indian Muslim and a shopkeeper in a small, growing city in the country's remote interior. Though born and raised in another country in a more cosmopolitan city on the coast during the colonial period, as neither European nor fully African, Salim observes the rapid changes in his homeland with an outsider's distance.   ==Analysis== One critic thinks it represents &quot;the gradual darkening of African society as it returns to its age-old condition of bush and blood&quot; [ V.S. Naipaul by Selwyn Reginald Cudjoe, p. 186] and thinks this pessimistic response shows Naipaul's &quot;inability to examine postcolonial societies in any depth&quot;[ Ibid. page 185]    Naipaul credits an extramarital affair for giving ''A Bend in the River'' and his later books greater fluidity, saying these &quot;in a way to some extent depend on her (i.e., his mistress). They stopped being dry.”[ New York Times]  