British writers in tropical Africa, 1936-1985: Cultural crossover in the travel and fictional works of Elspeth Huxley, Graham Greene and V. S. and Shiva Naipaul

Pairing travel books with novels, this study of the works of Elspeth Huxley, Graham Greene and V. S. and Shiva Naipaul traces the relationship between Europe and Tropical Africa over a fifty-year period, demonstrating the growing empathy of these authors for the African people.;The first chapter explores colonialism in the twenties and thirties, as Elspeth Huxley reveals in The Walled City (1949) that while some colonial officials used Africa merely to advance their careers, others came anxious to help the African people: these idealists were unwittingly co-opted by the colonial system itself.;Chapters two and three deal with the work of Graham Greene. In The Heart of the Matter (1948) Greene presents Westerners as overcivilized, uncaring, predatory. Later, in A Burnt-Out Case (1961), Greene seeks a synthesis between African and Western culture through Christianity. He fears, though, that the most lasting legacy of the Europeans may in fact be their having taught Africans the ways and means of exploitation.;The last two chapters turn to works of V. S. Naipaul. Writing in the 1970's, after country upon country achieved independence, in In A Free State (1971) this author evokes the bitter aftermath of colonialism, examining the reasons that bloody power struggles in newly-independent Tropical African countries have sometimes been followed by dictatorship or one-party rule. In A Bend in the River (1979), depicting the rite of passage of an Indian trader in a central African country, Naipaul shows the youthful businessman learning sombre truths about colonial history and life in a modern African state.;Finally, in North of South (1979), V. S. Naipaul's brother, Shiva, re-examines the relationship between Africa and the West, one in which neither side seems able to cope with exposure to the other. Although the Naipaul brothers detail a continent on the brink of collapse, in the last work of the epilogue, Out in the Midday Sun (1985), Elspeth Huxley presents Kenya as one of few African nations enjoying relative stability and harmonious race relations.