When Pius Fernandes, a retired schoolteacher living in modern day Dar es Salaam, discovers a diary of a British colonial administrator from 1913, he is drawn into a provocative account of the Asian community of East Africa, and the liaisons, feelings and secrets of its people, over the course of a century.

Part generational history, part detective story, part social chronicle, M.G. Vassanji's award-winning novel magnificently conjures setting and period as it explores notions of identity and exile.