Dan - Niapaul - 2/9/2011

Stylistically Niapaul really creates his own thing here. But finishing the book I felt somewhat ungratified. Maybe I need some more time away from the novel to really get a grasp on it. There is so much that Niapual is trying to say with this work that I’m not sure all of it really came to the forefront (at least for me.) So I definitely feel that this book needs a second read before I can make any strong accusations about it. If I did a paper on this I would like to focus on the aspects of the book that have been seen as controversial, or topics that people have found or called controversial. These can be seen in the similarities of between Salim’s fictional country and the Congo. I also feel that most of the characters (Zebeth, the depiction of the president, Yvette) represent integral cultural and sociopolitical aspects that can be found in both the Africa of the new and the Africa of the old. They all play into Niapaul’s overall political commentary of the continent.