Salim is both the protagonist and the first-person narrator of the novel. He is of Muslim Indian descent, although his family has lived in coastal Africa for generations. In search of both his own life and a more glamorous, European influenced lifestyle, Salim buys a shop in a remote, interior village from family friend Nazruddin. Salim enjoys the more sophisticated life of the Domain and begins an affair with Yvette. There is violence and fear from uprisings and from the president’s officials. Salim experiences a near-constant tension between wanting to remain and feeling he should leave the town. He travels to London, gets engaged to Nazruddin’s daughter, and discovers on his return that his business has been commandeered by the government and given to someone else. Salim works as the store’s manager while undertaking illegal smuggling to make enough money to leave the town for good. He is as unresolved a character at the end of the book as he was at the beginning. The reader senses that Salim will make a life for himself, as he did in the town, but that he will always experience the tension associated with being a person with no true home.