Word: shiva
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...MUST BE hard to follow in the footsteps of a famous and brilliant older brother. Unfortunately, Shiva Naipaul cannot compete with his brother's polish or his sensitivity. Both are missing from North of South. The book is a montage of conversations held or overheard by the author during a six-month visit to Kenya, Zambia and Tanzania. For Shiva Africa is a land of hypocrisy, deceit and irony. Some of his examples are apt: an African student loves books but hates to read; young boys selling peanuts are condemned as capitalists in Tanzania; religious Hindus devour beef sandwiches...
...Shiva's persistent sardonic tone undermines his anecdotes' effectiveness. The reader tires quickly of his smug arrogance, and yearns for some affirmative statement about Africa. Everyone on the "dark continent" seems to be a caricature--all racist and drugged white tourists, or insufferably dogmatic bureaucrats...
...work has two other major flaws. First, Shiva presents no connecting analysis to link his anecdotes. This approach aggravates the reader's impatience with Naipaul's tone--as he becomes increasingly weary from traveling overland, so the reader becomes more tired of nasty asides...
...Second, Shiva's theoretical point that "the African soul is a blank slate in which anything can be written" is offensive. For Shiva, Pan-Africanism, Tanzania's self-reliance and the rebirth of Swahili mean nothing. He sees only Kenyans worshipping the West's wealth and culture. And Shiva, like his brother, does not give enough credit to the governments and people of these nations who are struggling with the racial and class problems of a colonial past...
...Shiva Naipaul is most weak where his brother is strongest--the ability to empathize with all the people he writes about. He does not try to understand why a nouveau riche black Kenyan has two freezers (which she never uses), whisky at every meal, gold-painted nails, and an expropriated mansion too large for her needs. He simply finds her ludicrous and tasteless...