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The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

These words, which open the novel, articulate a philosophy of life that the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Salim, will learn over the course of the story. Salim arrived at this philosophy in part from his own experience and in part from the life story of his friend and compatriot Indar. Both Salim and Indar grew up in an ethnically Indian community on the East African coast. As Asians living in Africa, they both experienced a sense of dislocation, and this dislocation grew worse for both men as they left their home community. Salim moved to the African interior, and Indar attended a prestigious university in England. Over time, both Salim and Indar learned that their intense feelings of depression and anxiety stemmed from their desires being out of alignment with how the world really works. Instead of continuing to pursue unrealistic fantasies, they would need to accept the world as it was to find success and satisfaction. Salim distills the basic tenets of this philosophy in the opening line of his narrative, which the reader must in turn use to assess the truth of Salim’s aphorism.

However, over the course of the book, neither Indar nor Salim successfully lives by the philosophy that so boldly opens the novel. Indar enjoys a long period of independence as a globe-trotting lecturer and consultant, but this period comes to an end when his business associates try to force him in undesirable new directions. Indar realizes too late that his associates have far more wealth and power than he does, and thus he does not stand on equal footing with them. Despairing at the loss of the belief he’d held of himself as an independent man of the world, Indar retreats from society. Salim, who witnesses the downward spiral of Indar’s career, has a chance to learn from his friend’s mistakes. However, Salim never manages to fully take charge of his own life and instead always depends on help or insights from others. The novel’s opening sentence therefore carries an irony since no one in the book lives up to the philosophy it articulates. Even Indar, who worked hard to make something of himself, would eventually “become nothing,” and neither Indar nor Salim seems to have a place in the world as it is.

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