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North of South: An African Journey (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) | 
 enlarge | Author: Shiva Naipaul
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 713343
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140188266
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.704328
EAN: 9780140188264
ASIN: 0140188266
Publication Date: February 1, 1997
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Condition: The book is clean but may have highlights.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 Too verbose and critical January 23, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
As an East African Asian, I was really looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy it quite as much.
The author is very cynical and sharply critical of almost EVERYTHING. It doesn't seem that he likes ANYTHING about East Africa.
Also, he often provides more details than are necessary on mundane things, like unexpected meetings with strange people.
Overall I would say that the author has done injustice to East Africa, and particularly the Asians of East Africa.
 A Cynical and Sad African Travelogue January 2, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
~North of South: An African Journey~ is succinct and controversial travelogue by an Indian expatriate to the African continent. The author Naipaul presents a cynical, if not lampoonish travelogue of his odyssey through Africa in the 1970s: in particular, he visits Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. His book reflects upon the socialist ideologies advocated by the various regimes, and how in spite of their lofty ideological ideals, they only partake of corruption and misery. Central Africa is a region synonymous with bloodshed, corruption, plight, and poverty. Naipaul comments frequently about loose morals, laziness, and rank corruption. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Naipaul also illustrates how deeply ambivalent native Africans are to Asian immigrants, mostly from India. The issue of race is quite an odd one. The legacy of colonials left Africans ambivalent against foreigners, but strangely dependent on them. As Naipaul notes the few mildly affluent Africans would rather have their children educated by Westerners than by their own people.
A July 04, 2005 interview with a Kenyan economist in the German newspaper Spiegel offered some hard-hitting truth that the world needs to hear about Africa. Socialism in Africa, reinforced by naive western powers and the United Nations, is at the root of Africa's problems. It held true in the 1970s. And it holds true in the twenty-first century. Intervention inculcates weakness, saps market vitality, and props up despots and dictators. In 2005, the Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati says that foreign aid to Africa does more harm than good, declaring, "For God's sake, please just stop." He elaborated, "Such intentions have been damaging our continent for the past 40 years. If the industrial nations really want to help the Africans, they should finally terminate this awful aid. The countries that have collected the most development aid are also the ones that are in the worst shape. Despite the billions that have poured in to Africa, the continent remains poor." Spiegel then queried, "Do you have an explanation for this paradox?" Shikwati retorted, "Huge bureaucracies are financed (with the aid money), corruption and complacency are promoted, Africans are taught to be beggars and not to be independent. In addition, development aid weakens the local markets everywhere and dampens the spirit of entrepreneurship that we so desperately need. As absurd as it may sound: Development aid is one of the reasons for Africa's problems. If the West were to cancel these payments, normal Africans wouldn't even notice. Only the functionaries would be hard hit. Which is why they maintain that the world would stop turning without this development aid." Spiegel then queried, "Even in a country like Kenya, people are starving to death each year. Someone has got to help them." Shikwati declared, "But it has to be the Kenyans themselves who help these people. When there's a drought in a region of Kenya, our corrupt politicians reflexively cry out for more help... It's only natural that they willingly accept the plea for more help... before long, several thousands tons of corn are shipped to Africa ...and at some point, this corn ends up in the harbor of Mombasa. A portion of the corn often goes directly into the hands of unscrupulous politicians who then pass it on to their own tribe to boost their next election campaign. Another portion of the shipment ends up on the black market where the corn is dumped at extremely low prices. Local farmers may as well put down their hoes right away; no one can compete with the UN's World Food Program. And because the farmers go under in the face of this pressure, Kenya would have no reserves to draw on if there actually were a famine next year. It's a simple but fatal cycle."
 Naipaul's glance at post-Colonial Africa August 26, 2005
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Shiva Naipaul's _North of South: An African Journey_ is the most cynical book I've ever read. It is a travelogue of the author's visit to three postcolonial African countries in the 1970s: Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. Naipaul is a Hindu, born in Trinidad, and he pays attention to the role (and plight) of South Asians (Hindus, Pakistanis, Sikhs, Parsees, etc) in East Africa. He also focuses on the black-white relations in Africa as well. Naipaul gives Africa and everyone involved in its affairs (whites, blacks and Asians) no credit whatsoever. Declining European colonial powers gave their African colonies political independence in the 1960s and a variety of demagogues like and Julius Nyerre in Tanzania who took power spouting third world varieties of socialism and Marxism. Despite claims of social and economic progress, Africa remains as backward as ever. Naipaul freely writes of his disgust with the countries and its deceived leadership from the first page of the book until the last. This book, like another reviewer noted below, certainly is not going to make it into a black studies program anytime soon. It is a relief from portraits of Africa that classify it as a tropical paradise, a land of innocents exploited by evil Europeans, or conversely an AIDS infested human disaster. Naipaul's cynicism shows Africa the way it really is-struggling, corrupt, deceived, but at the same time Afroca is chugging along optimistically in some areas, with idealism and occasional realism, and attempting to do as well as it can to develop itself. No dry textbook prose here; the book is short, easy to read, engaging and very well written.
Sadly neglected and misunderstood masterpiece February 12, 2005
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a wonderfully written book; Naipaul's proses flows effortlessly across the page, the connexion between thought and word is seemless. The comparatively small body of work Naipaul produced before his tragic early death has been neglected in favour of that of his less talented, but longer lived, brother (a Nobel Prizewinner). However in this one work, Naipaul's prosody surpasses anything produced either by his brother, or by other twentieth century travel writers like Thoreau. That said, some of the other reviews here are ludicrously jaundiced and do a disservice to the book itself. This is no crude work of 'anti-pc' nonsense (an American political term that the archly European Naipaul would have shuddered at). The prose is not illiberal (in the American sense of the term) but rather aristocratic, in the best tradition of Evelyn Waugh (the writer Naipaul most resembles). Like Waugh, Naipaul's caustic observations rip into the heart of human weakness and frailty, exposing the hypocrisy and cant from all sides. The pretensions of ghastly businessmen disgust him as much as the crudity of the black 'socialists'. Those who seek to defend either Marxism or any form of business enterprise system face Naipaul's perfectly expressed derision. I personally found Naipaul's lack of human feeling at the extent of Africa's poverty a little shocking but it is a rapturous pleasure to be so shocked.
Tragic, funny account of the Way We Were .... December 23, 2004
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
North of South describes Shiva Naipaul's journey through Eastern Africa as it emerged from colonialism several decades ago. Optimism and energy prevailed alongside a blind faith in imported philosophies which pundits failed to translate meaningfully to the impoverished, illiterate masses around them.
Naipaul is a witty, bold writer with a gift for sharp imagery and an uncanny radar for subtle undercurrents in human interaction - the hypocrisy of the black elite, the jittery desperation of the settlers, the paranoid clannishness of the Asians. He also vividly portrays the deepening poverty and decaying infrastructure that underscored the failure of well-intentioned socialism in Tanzania.
While some racists may use it to justify their beliefs, the book is more a compassionate, humorous look at pre-industrial populations trying to forge national identities from scratch.
While today's poor countries may not have to follow the painstaking, centuries-long process that western countries did, this is still a reminder that there is no shortcut to institutional development.
For Africans, this nostalgic book shows how far we have come, but is also a challenge to craft a fresh vision for the long distance still left to travel.
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