 Helon Habila of "The Guardian" notes that the novel's first part is slow in pace but it is about political and personal survival and is "a good example of how the post-colonial novel should be written, dispassionately, avoiding the easy pitfalls of nostalgia and essentialism".An American weekly, "Publishers Weekly", in their review mentions that Vassanji has explored "a conflict of epic proportions from the perspective of a man trapped in 'the perilous in-between'".