The novel’s protagonist and narrator, Salim, grew up in a community of ethnically Indian Muslims on the east African coast. As the novel opens, Salim explains how he came to leave his coastal home and move to an unnamed country in the African interior. Worried that the trend of political independence sweeping the continent would scatter his home community, Salim sought a way out. When a family friend named Nazruddin returned to the coast after several years in the interior, he offered to sell Salim his trading goods shop. Salim took Nazruddin up on his offer and drove to his new home: a former colonial town located at the bend in a major river.

Salim found the town decrepit and scattered with vestiges of empire that local Africans had destroyed in retaliation against their longstanding colonial oppressor. Only a few Europeans remained, and most Africans had returned to their villages in the bush. Not long after Salim’s arrival in the interior, an uprising devastated the Indian community on the coast. News of the persecutions vindicated Salim’s decision to relocate. In the midst of the uprising, Salim’s family sent a half-African former slave named Metty to serve as Salim’s shop assistant.

Salim’s modest shop traded in basic household goods, and his first customer was an African trader named Zabeth, locally renowned as a sorceress. Zabeth wanted her son, Ferdinand, to get a formal education, so she sent him to attend the secondary school in the town and asked Salim to watch over him. A Belgian priest named Father Huismans ran the school. Though Huismans believed in European superiority, African religions fascinated him, and he maintained a collection of wooden masks.

Just as life in the town began to pick up, rebel activity ignited in the bush. The President sent white mercenaries, and they swiftly quashed the rebellion. As peace set in again, Huismans was murdered while on an expedition in the bush. Soon after the murder, which nobody investigated, an American traveler stole the majority of Huismans’s mask collection.

Following the rebellion, the town experienced an economic boom, and it once again became a regional trading center. In the midst of the boom, the President commandeered a section of land near the town that had once been a European suburb but had since reverted to bush. On the large plot, now deemed a “Domain of the State,” the President commissioned the construction of modern-looking buildings that would comprise a new polytechnic university. The people in the town, however, remained largely ignorant of what went on in the Domain, which seemed to them a world apart.

Lecturers and professors came from the capital and from abroad, including a childhood friend of Salim’s named Indar. Indar introduced Salim to the society of the Domain, which was full of European intellectuals and African students discussing “the new Africa.” Though stimulated by his experiences in the Domain, Salim felt conflicted about the place. The lofty discussions of African modernity clashed with the evidently shoddy construction of the buildings and an aborted farm project, already overgrown with unused tractors rusting in the field.

Among the people Salim met in the Domain were a historian named Raymond and his much younger wife, Yvette. Raymond was once the President’s mentor, and he remained loyal to the President despite falling out of the politician’s favor. Though Raymond’s progress on a monumental history of the country had stalled, he worked on editing a collection of the President’s speeches. But the President, evidently displeased with Raymond’s work, published and distributed a radically altered version of the book that only included brief maxims.

Meanwhile, Salim engaged in an affair with Yvette. For Salim, who had only previously slept with prostitutes, his intensely physical liaisons with Yvette proved reinvigorating. But as their relationship progressed, Salim grew uncomfortable with his connection to Yvette and the failures of her husband. Sensing that Yvette saw him as another version of Raymond, Salim attacked her. Their affair fizzled out.

When a prominent business owner suddenly sold off his assets and left town, Salim and others understood the event as marking the end of the town’s boom. Soon after, political unrest began to grow. The President established a Youth Guard to help maintain order, but he disbanded the group when members started abusing their power. Presumably humiliated by the President’s denunciation, former Youth Guard members formed a Liberation Army, which publicly proclaimed its rejection of the President and his vision of a new Africa.

Increasing violence perpetrated by the Liberation Army led Salim to seek a way out of the country. He decided to travel to London to visit Nazruddin. During his visit, Salim learned about Nazruddin’s disastrous business ventures in Canada and his troubles in London. Salim also felt disenchanted to see so many people “like him” struggling to survive. The experience made him realize the need to reject false ideals about home and security and instead live in the world as it was. Before he left London, Salim got engaged to Nazruddin’s daughter, Kareisha.

Upon returning to the town at the bend in the river, Salim learned that the President had ordered the nationalization of all foreign-owned businesses. An inexperienced and increasingly troublesome African named Théotime now owned the shop and kept Salim on as manager and chauffeur. Desperate to get out of the country for good, Salim started trading illegally in gold and ivory. On a tip from Metty, the police discovered Salim’s hidden cache of prohibited goods, and when Salim refused to pay a bribe, they arrested him.

After days in jail, the arresting officer escorted Salim to see the commissioner, who happened to be Zabeth’s son, Ferdinand. Ferdinand informed Salim that the political situation was deteriorating and counseled him to leave town as soon as possible. The next day, on the eve of the President’s arrival in the town, Salim boarded the steamer and left.