The story of a family: their loves, their griefs and, finally, their sudden expulsion at the hands of one of the world's most terrifying tyrants. In 1972, dictator Idi Amin expelled 80,000 South Asians from Uganda even though many had lived in East Africa for generations. Spanning the years between 1921 and 1975, this novel tells the story of Raju, a young Indian man drawn to Africa by the human impulse to seek a better life, and three generations of his family, who carve a life for themselves in a racially stratified colonial and post-colonial society.