A Girl from Zanzibar

The Western idea of exoticism is turned upside down in A Girl from Zanzibar, a cool, cosmopolitan novel by Roger King (Sea Level, etc.). Marcella D'Souza, a ""Goan Indian Portuguese Arab African of Catholic Moslem parentage,"" displays early entrepreneurial talent, running a small taxi business and then an ice cream stand with her aunt in Zanzibar. She soon seizes the chance to move to London, where she parlays her skills into a small real estate empire and becomes involved with Benji, a Singaporean Indian who hatches grand, shady international schemes. An unfortunate encounter lands Marcella in jail for eight years, and when she gets out she wangles herself a job as an associate professor of Multicultural Studies at a small college in Vermont. From this college she reflects on the odd twists and turnings of her life, the strangest perhaps being her sojourn in snowy, peaceful-and yes, exotic-Vermont.