Author Cyprian Fernandes was born a war baby in 1943 in Kenya. Forced to leave school at the age of thirteen because he would not drop his pants for a caning, Fernandes experienced a wild and epic childhood. In Yesterday in Paradise, he tells his story growing up in colonial British East Africa.

With a history of the region and the people originating from the state of Goa, India, and the Republic of Kenya, East Africa, woven in, Fernandes shares a host of stories that became a part of his first twenty-plus years. He was in the middle of the bloodcurdling Mau Mau...