The Gunny Sack

Winner of the 1990 Commonwealth First Novel Prize (Africa). The Gunny Sack begins its tale with an old and unremarkable bag. Its inheritor, Salim Juma, begins to piece together the stories hidden inside only to discover the fateful series of events that changed his family forever.In exile from Tanzania, Salim Juma is bequeathed a gunny sack by his beloved but strange great-aunt. The bag takes him back to his childhood, when he was first mesmerised by the peculiar mementos inside. Put together, the bag's contents tell the tantalising tales of his great-grandfather, Dhanji Govindji, who migrated from India to East Africa and fell in love with an enslaved woman named Bibi Taratibu. The stories that follow stretch across four generations of Salim's family, tracing their footsteps and unravelling their loves, betrayals, and incredible adventures.The Gunny Sack is an extraordinary chronicle into the experiences of Indian migrants in Africa as they struggled under changing power structures, from German invasions to British colonialism.