The novel opens with a statement that sums up the novel’s worldview: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it” (3). Following this sweeping opening line, we meet Salim, our first-person narrator, who has bought a shop in the interior of an unnamed African country, in a town at “the bend in the great river” (3). He’s purchased this shop from a family friend, Nazruddin. The town has been nearly destroyed by postcolonial unrest, and Salim understands he will have to start from scratch to build up the shop and make it successful. Salim has been living on the coast and undertakes to drive to his new town in his car, over rough terrain, through the bush, and past “the men with guns” (3). He gets past these men by engaging in “palavers,” negotiations over bribes that can take hours. When he finally arrives in the town, he finds the European area burned down and overtaken by bush. The shop has survived although, “[i]t smelt of rats and was full of dung” (5). 

Salim finds there are other foreigners in town, and people in need of the goods he can sell.