All through out the novel, A Bend In the River, VS Naipaul gives way to people being stuck between two cultures and without permanent residence. The majority of characters in the novel are found to be either of mixed race, culture, or part of a culture foreign to the region, each character playing an integral role and helping sculpt A Bend In the River. It is through characters such as Salim, Metty, Ferdinand, Shoba, and Mahesh that Naipaul expresses the racial feelings of Africa at the time.
             Salim is a man of Indian heritage living in a coastal African town where his people have prospered fro generations. An opportunity arises to own a shop inland and he jumps on it and begins the next period of his life. The novel is based around Salim's world. Through him Naipaul displays the feelings of race and of Africa. Salim's experience comes from his adulterous affair with a white woman, Yvette. His attraction is based somewhat upon the quest for the forbidden fruit.
             She was barefooted, feet white and beautiful and finely made. I looked at her feet before I considered her face and her blouse, black silk, embroidered round the low cut collar (126)
             The two of them met while listening to the civil rights music of Joan Bayez thus catalyzing the mixture of peoples.
             Mahesh and Shoba are a local Indian couple and friends of Salim's. The travesty they encounter stems from Shoba's family and there dislike for Mahesh and his ways. He brought shame to their family and threatened to have acid thrown in his face. Mahesh and Shoba's love for each other is so blind that they are oblivious to the surrounding danger and disregard what their family's feelings of discontent. Mahesh tries willfully to make family life into a bulwark against the assaults of history as he keeps himself busy with his crazy ideas.
             Ali, a servant from Salim's family travels inward to live with Salim at the bend in the river. It is the...