From the Giller Prize-winning author of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall and The Assassin's Song, a powerfully emotional saga of love and loss: the story of an African/Indian man who returns to the Tanzanian town of his birth--in search of the girl he once loved, the past that will not loosen its grip on him, and the sense of self that has always eluded him.

A driven and successful doctor, Kamal Punja--born in Tanzania to an African mother and an Indian father, married to an Indian woman, father of two, resident of Canada for nearly four decades--one day "stepped off the treadmill, allowed an old regret to awaken, and suddenly set off to find the girl he had known as a child, keep his promise to her that he would return." This is the story of Kamal's journey back to Africa, to the complications of his long unresolved mixed racial identity, and the nightmarish legacy of his broken promise to the girl, Saida. A stunning novel--dramatic, provocative, searching, and intelligent--it moves deftly between the past and present, painting both an intimate picture of love and betrayal and a broad canvas of political promise and failure in contemporary Africa. A story at once timeless and very much of our own time.