The novel shows how a young Indo-Guyanese immigrant to the UK is racialized; aspiring to leave behind the "messiness" and confusion of the poverty-stricken immigrant lives he sees around him, he goes to Cambridge. The story is narrated by this character long after, in ways that reveal how this aspiration was assimilative and colonizing, encouraging him to abandon his friends and his roots. His life story makes it clear how different systems of racial categorization work in Guyana and in the UK to violently separate those who might be friends, lovers, and allies.