...Yeats, reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, New York. For Alison, Catherine, and John The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it. VS NAIl'AUL CONTENTS Introduction Abbreviations of Plato's Works IX xv ONE THE FALSE SOCRATES 3 1.1...

...zin van de roman is in feite een motto dat rechtstreeks aansluit bij dat van Jimmy in Guerrillas : "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it" (p. 9). Een mens creëert zijn eigen plaats op de wereld en wordt pas echt vrij als hij zijn verantwoordelijkheid...

...quite haunting? It's the opening sentence of A Bend in the River, which, if I may remind you, begins: 'The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.' That's a very severe, Jehovah-like judgment on the world, is it not? Or, at any rate, on those millions...

...the arguments to which they refer means that we cannot finally dismiss Salim himself as unreliable. "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." So sure of itself, that voice, and yet so idiosyncratic too, even as its bleak grandeur lays claim...

...when one sets it alongside the opening of Naipaul's powerful novel of Africa, A Bend in the River. "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." His sympathy is unsparing. A Turn in the South does not shrink from the desperation of southern blacks...

...even better one in the sixth paragraph." "Show me." It was in the middle of the paragraph. It ran, "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." It was certainly a mouthful for a semi-educated Indian shopkeeper in the Congolese bush, yet it seemed...

...need to say today summed up in VS Naipaul's graphic introduction to his novel, A Bend in the River. 'The world is what it is, men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.' The twentieth century has, in economic terms, not been the Caribbean's century. We stand now on the...

...Naipaul explored his thesis of a universal civilization most cogently. The novel opens with these words: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."29 Naipaul's forte is to browbeat his reader by such pontifical high writing. Where do you find...

...history that recurrently sweep over Africa as a whole and give credence to the opening line of the novel: "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." To avoid becoming the victim of such a pitiless, if not cynical vision, the narrator escapes one dying...

...to be alive and have nothing. Elsewhere Naipaul has said, at the beginning of A Bend in the River, "THE WORLD is what it is; men who are nothing, who...themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." This statement is the absolute opposite of his former youthful dismissal of the Caribbean. And I understand...