Exile as the major condition of life is a central theme in Naipaul's A Bend in the River. (p. 100)

Naipaul implies [in the novel] that there is a conflict between change and stasis which is always in equilibrium, so that nothing can progress and nothing can stay still. In the image of the water hyacinths which clog the river, so newly arrived from nowhere that they have no name, Naipaul suggests that state of restless fixation as peculiarly African, as totally beyond human control.

The novel is circular in its movement, almost musical in its arrangement. Not only themes, but phrases repeat and expand in the course of its development. The Latin motto recurs, growing in irony. "The world is what it is," which opens the book, reappears throughout it while the world which is, changes. And the repeated journey out of the jungle becomes, sooner or later, again and again, the journey back into the jungle, along the same path, as the man led out, into slavery and exile, returns, with slavery and exile already implicit in his spirit.

The novel suggests that the journey from place to place is part of a longer journey, through life, through history, into larger and larger spirals of exile and loss…. In A Bend in the River Antaeus's plight has become a universal one; a separation from the strength-giving motherland. Even the universe suffers from diffusion; the narrator amuses himself by reading about the Big Bang theory of creation, the absolute model and prototype of all motion, all history in his world. (p. 101)

A Bend in the River is a novel without flaw. A novel also without hope. Always a writer of amazing force and integrity, Naipaul delivers this abstract on the human condition with a courage towards his own despair which makes it appear remarkably like grace. (p. 102)