Multi-generational family saga starting around 1900 when the British kidnap a boy in Gujarat and force him to work on the East Africa Railway. The family grows, moving through Kenya before settling in Kampala, Uganda, then being expelled in the 1970s, the story concluding in Toronto in the 1990s.

I really liked the way the overlapping points of view of five generations allowed resonances to build across the story, especially around how each see home and family. There are a lot of great scenes of people talking past each other because their personal context is so different, while letting the reader understand where everyone's coming from. It's also a multi-faceted look at the damage done by the British Empire, both outright like kidnapping and forced labour or slaughtering the Mau Mau, and second hand by setting up the class and race conflicts that followed independence in India and Uganda, and finally xenophobia and racism in Canada and in the UK itself. I liked how the central family was shown to cause harm while at the same time being treated unfairly, and how what tended to save people was reaching across divides on a personal level.

The writing was gorgeous, with so many stop and stare sentences, and a lush feeling of culture and place. If the book had any flaws, it was sometimes reaching too hard for a message (connecting things with the title theme), rather than letting it fall out more naturally. But that's a quibble if anything. Gorgeous book.