A girl from Zanzibar

the long version

"A Girl from Zanzibar is the story of Marcella D'Souza, an ambitious, beautiful young woman of Portuguese-Indian-Arab ancestry who escapes her island home when "all that moved in Zanzibar were its ghosts." It is 1983, and in her determination to flee broken dreams, Marcella embarks on a perilous course of action that takes her to London and into an entirely new world of money, power, love affairs, and international intrigue. Her story shifts between the increasingly dangerous streets of London to the refuge she takes many years later at a quiet Vermont college (as Assistant Professor of Multicultural Studies, she's instructed, "Teach whatever you like")."--BOOK JACKET.