The lives of the "Wahindi" (Swahili for "Indians") were first fictionalized for a Western mass audience in V. S. Naipaul's "A Bend in the River". The Trinidadian West Indies author's 1979 book remains the best-known literary work in English addressing the Indian experience in East and Central Africa. Though recently "A Bend in the River" enjoyed a resurgence of critical acclaim for its dead-on portrayal of post-colonial African life in the former Zaire (renamed the Democratic Republic of Congo), the novel also lifted the curtain on an ethnic group who had become central to Southeast Africa's life in the later half of the 20th century.