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Salim

The narrator and protagonist. Salim grew up in a family of merchants among the ethnic Indian community on the East African coast. Fearing imminent violence as nations throughout Africa gained independence, Salim relocated to a former colonial town in an unnamed nation in the continent’s interior. Salim sees himself as a perpetual outsider, never fully belonging to the Muslim community of India from whence his family came and yet never quite African either. As such, he tends to situate himself as a detached observer, forever watching what’s happening without fully taking part in it.

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Indar

Salim’s childhood friend. Indar, who also grew up on the East African coast, is the grandson of a wealthy money-lender. Though he was raised in luxury, Indar’s family lost its wealth and influence in a rebellion that raged along the coast upon independence. Feeling lost and alienated after graduating from a prestigious university in England, Indar pledged to forge his own path and stamp out all sentimental desires for the past. He became a traveling lecturer who speaks on political and philosophical issues related to a newly modernizing Africa.

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Raymond

A historian and former mentor to the President. Now in his fifties and supervising the polytechnic institute in the Domain, Raymond has lived in Africa for many years. While working as a history professor at the university in the country’s capital, Raymond became a mentor to the impressive young African man who would become the independent nation’s first president. Though Raymond played a significant role in the young man’s early success, he’s found himself increasingly irrelevant now that the young man has risen to political fame. Even so, Raymond remains stubbornly loyal to the President.

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Father Huismans

A Belgian priest. Father Huismans, who runs the local secondary school, is a relic of the colonial past. In his forties, Huismans maintains a belief in European superiority and a reverence for European colonialism despite also nurturing a fascination with local African religion. He believes that “true” Africa is dying and works to collect as many masks and other emblems of African spiritual traditions as he can. He also believes that the town at the bend in the river may have its ups and downs, but it will always persist as local commercial center.

Metty

Salim’s assistant. Metty is a half-African boy who grew up on the East African coast in a compound belonging to Salim’s family. Originally known as Ali, he took on the name Metty when he left the coast to join Salim in the unnamed town at the bend in the river. His new name derives from the French word métis, which means “mixed” and refers to his mixed-race heritage. Though energetic and quick to adapt to his new life, and despite starting a family in the town, Metty never sheds his outsider status and grows increasingly morose and disenchanted.

Yvette

Raymond’s wife. Nearly thirty years her husband’s junior, Yvette is a beautiful Belgian woman who strives to keep up an appearance of glamor but secretly feels disappointed with the course of her life.

Zabeth

Salim’s customer from a remote village. Zabeth is one of Salim’s first and most loyal customers. Once every month she makes the arduous and dangerous journey from her remote village to the town, where she makes purchases on behalf of her community. Salim finds her a canny businesswoman and marvels at her resilience and no-nonsense attitude. Renowned locally as a powerful sorceress, Zabeth plies herself with protective ointments that give her a strong and distinctive scent.

Ferdinand 

Zabeth’s son. Ferdinand is the child of Zabeth and a traveling trader from another tribe to the south. He spent his youth with his father’s tribe, but he moved to live with his mother’s people following his father’s death. Zabeth sends him to the town to attend the school there. After finishing, he attends the polytechnic institute at the nearby Domain, then moves to the capital for an administrative cadetship. Ferdinand’s outlook and personality change throughout each of these phases of his life, and Salim sees these changes as reflecting the development of “the new African.”

Mahesh

Salim’s friend and an entrepreneur. Like Salim, Mahesh is an ethnic Indian who has lived in Africa all his life. He and his wife, Shoba, are both vain and strive to maintain the appearance of success and personal beauty, though they largely keep to themselves. Mahesh gets caught up easily in new money-making ideas, and after several failed ventures (some illegal), he opens a successful branch of the Bigburger franchise. Despite his entrepreneurial drive and his frequent insistence on the need to “carry on,” Mahesh’s reluctance to imagine a different kind of life for himself belies an ultimately defeatist attitude.

Shoba

Mahesh’s wife. Shoba comes from a well-to-do Indian family that she spurned when she decided to marry Mahesh. Threats from her brothers led her to run away from the coast and settle with Mahesh in the African interior. Shoba remains afraid of everyone and everything, and she worries that she has wasted her life by simply “carrying on” in Africa. Even more obsessed with personal beauty than her husband, she imagines traveling to Switzerland to receive an expensive skin treatment.

Ildephonse

Mahesh and Shoba’s houseboy. Ildephonse is a young African man who works in Mahesh and Shoba’s house as a live-in servant and later becomes the unofficial “manager” of Mahesh’s Bigburger branch. Salim sees Ildephonse as eager to please his boss but otherwise vacant.

Nazruddin

A businessman and mentor to Salim. Nazruddin has long been a friend of Salim’s family. As independence swept the continent and Nazruddin sought to resettle in Uganda, he sold Salim his old shop in a central African town. Though always enthusiastic and forever seeking his next profitable business venture, Nazruddin lives with the belief that his extraordinary luck as a businessman will one day run out and leave him ruined.

Kareisha

Nazruddin’s daughter. Kareisha’s experience growing up endowed her with a worldly attitude. She sensibly trained as a pharmacist to ensure that she would have a job wherever her family might move next. Though she was informally betrothed to Salim from a young age, the engagement becomes formal when Salim visits Nazruddin’s family in London.

Théotime

The new owner of Salim’s shop. Théotime, a local African mechanic, becomes the “state trustee” of Salim’s shop after the President announces the nationalization of all foreign-owned businesses. Though at first modest about his state-mandated position, Théotime grows increasingly entitled and bold in the demands he makes of Salim and Metty.

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