A demented army general takes power in a land-locked country in East Africa, and orders the expulsion of an entire race claiming that God has ordered him to do so. As the Expulsion countdown clock ticks away, the "East Indians" run helter-skelter in search of a new country and a new identity. But the "East Indian" protagonist, David Da Costa, who is something of an African patriot, is sure his citizenship of the country will exempt him from the Expulsion order, which he imagines is largely aimed at Indians with British nationality. In the course of trying to verify his status, he discovers the plight of his own Goan community - a minority within a minority - at pains to be different, yet lumped in with the "East Indians." While the General tightens his grip of terror over the country, one shadowy Goan figure is already plotting his own, personal revenge.....

The novelist Francis Ebejer said of this book: (Sunday Times, Malta, 1985)
The General is Up is compulsive reading, totally engrossing. A particular time and place joins up with timelessness to produce literature. While it is certainly a political novel, it is, thanks to Nazareth the creative artist, art and novel first, the transformation of experience into destiny. Again, if politics reflects human passions, then the human content comes over strongly. Nazareth skilfully applies the right focus on a very human dilemma, without sacrificing the broader issues, and with the aid of characters that seem to have been wrested from silence and the night to appear in full and recognisable dimension."

The General is Up was published by TSAR Books in Toronto in 1991. The second edition was published by TSAR in December 1998. So the book is very much in print.