Unlike most of Gurnah's protagonists, the eponymous Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour, who is born in Leeds, England,[3] is not from Zanzibar.[4][3] Dottie grows up poor,[5] in a family of "ambiguously mixed origins".[3] The novel describes her struggle to serve as a parent for her brother and sister after her mother dies.[6]