Vassanji, M. G.

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Beautifully written and funny
Cross cultural linege in splendid form.

The Gunny Sack
M.G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Anchor Canada
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0385660650
Release Date: 2005-05-10

Book Description

Memory, Ji Bai would say, is this old sack here, this poor dear that nobody has any use for any more.

As the novel begins, Salim Juma, in exile from Tanzania, opens up a gunny sack bequeathed to him by a beloved great-aunt. Inside it he discovers the past — his own family’s history and the story of the Asian experience in East Africa. Its relics and artefacts bring with them the lives of Salim’s Indian great-grandfather, Dhanji Govindji, his extensive family, and all their loves and betrayals.

Dhanji Govindji arrives in Matamu — from Zanzibar, Porbander, and ultimately Junapur — and has a son with an African slave named Bibi Taratibu. Later, growing in prosperity, he marries Fatima, the woman who will bear his other children. But when his half-African son Husein disappears, Dhanji Govindji pays out his fortune in trying to find him again. As the tentacles of the First World War reach into Africa, with the local German colonists fighting British invaders, he spends more and more time searching. One morning he is suddenly murdered: he had spent not just his own money but embezzled that of others to finance the quest for his lost son.

“Well, listen, son of Juma, you listen to me and I shall give you your father Juma and his father Husein and his father…”

Part II of the novel is named for Kulsum, who marries Juma, Husein’s son; she is the mother of the narrator, Salim. We learn of Juma’s childhood as a second-class member of his stepmother’s family after his mother, Moti, dies. After his wedding to Kulsum there is a long wait in the unloving bosom of his stepfamily for their first child, Begum. It is the 1950s, and whispers are beginning of the Mau Mau rebellion.

Among the stories tumbling from the gunny sack comes the tailor Edward bin Hadith’s story of the naming of Dar es Salaam, the city Kulsum moves to with her children after her husband’s death. And gradually her son takes over the telling, recalling his own childhood. His life guides the narrative from here on. He remembers his mother’s store and neighbours’ intrigues, the beauty of his pristine English teacher at primary school, cricket matches, and attempts to commune with the ghost of his father. It is a vibrantly described, deeply felt childhood. The nation, meanwhile, is racked by political tensions on its road to independence, which comes about as Salim Juma reaches adolescence. With the surge in racial tension and nationalist rioting, several members of his close-knit community leave the country for England, America, and Canada.

I see this comedy now as an attempt to foil the workings of fate: how else to explain, what else to call, the irrevocable relentless chain of events that unfolded…

The title of Part III, Amina, is the name of Salim’s great unfulfilled love, and will also be the name of his daughter. He meets the first Amina while doing his National Service at Camp Uhuru, a place he feels he has been sent to in error. Amina is African, and their relationship inevitably causes his family anxiety, until the increasingly militant Amina leaves for New York. Salim becomes a teacher at his old school, and marries, but keeps a place for Amina in his heart. When she returns and is arrested by the more and more repressive government, Salim is hurriedly exiled abroad. He leaves his wife and daughter with the promise that he will send for them, knowing that he will not. The novel ends with Salim alone, the last memories coming out of the gunny sack, hoping that he will be his family’s last runaway.

Customer Reviews:

Beautifully written and funny.......2003-08-03

As an indian born in East Africa, I loved this book. The author writes beautifully and provides an accurate and insightful look into the culture of one particular group of Indians who were born and grew up in East Africa during the mid twentieth century.

Cross cultural linege in splendid form........2001-10-22

I was introduced to Vassanji while I was in my final year at university. He was being explored in Indian authors writing in english.
Vassanji is a fantastic story teller, his prose is smooth and imbued with myth and the intricate patterns of the narrators lineage.
The very title " gunny sack" promised much hertitage as it means a sack used for travelling. The author finds this and it is a metaphor for the discovery of his familial hertitage as he traces his ancestry from India to Africa.

Book Description

Vikram Lall comes of age in 1950s Kenya, at the same time that the colony is struggling towards independence. Against the unsettling backdrop of Mau Mau violence, Vic and his sister Deepa, the grandchildren of an Indian railroad worker, search for their place in a world sharply divided between Kenyans and the British. We follow Vic from a changing Africa in the fifties, to the hope of the sixties, and through the corruption and fear of the seventies and eighties. Hauntingly told in the voice of the now exiled Vic, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is an acute and bittersweet novel of identity and family, of lost love and abiding friendship, and of the insidious legacy of the British Empire.

Customer Reviews:

My life simply happened without deep designs; I was an easily disposable commodity.......2006-09-08

This saga of an Indian family living in Kenya, told by `one of Africa's most corrupt men', sketches the (in)direct implication of its family members in Kenya's history.

The Mau Mau movement of Yomo Kenyatta is fighting against the brutal British occupants (`plucking out eyes with bayonets') in order to free Kenya of its colonial regime.
The Indians in that country constitute an in-between world: `we Asians were special: we were brown, we were few and frightened and we could be threatened with deportation as aliens even if we had been in the country before some African people.'
Some stay neutral, but other chose sides and are directly involved in the committed atrocities.
Vikram Lall's idyllic youth comes brutally to an end with the murder of a white family.

After the black victory, the freedom movement and the Mau Mau are betrayed. `That ours had become a country of ten millionaires and ten million paupers. Those who had collaborated with the colonial police were now in all the high posts and had taken the best land and opportunities. ...If you were connected, through family or communal allegiances, even penniless you were protected and favoured.'

Corruption, blackmail, extortion and intimidation become rampant in order to `buy' cheaply the businesses of `strangers.
Vikram Lall becomes a civil servant overseeing big business contracts ...

This book is also a hymn on green Africa with the all importance of rain and a reminder of India's caste (marriage) and religious problems: `Her soul has flown away, it's only the empty body. She'll come back in a new body. I rather preferred the old body. How would I recognize the new one?'

Vassanji's chronicle is an impressive achievement, but not a `feast' of a book; instead Vikram Lall's world is one of racism, fanaticism, brutal power struggle and blatant corruption.
Not to be missed.

A rare piece of literature.......2006-08-30

This novel is presented in the first-person point of view, the narrator being Vikram Lall, an Indian born and raised in Kenya. We are made to understand that Vikram turns out to be a horrendously corrupt individual who bankrupts his nation. However, he begins by recounting his childhood, as a young boy in Nakuru, Kenya. Then we are carried into his young adulthood, as he begins to work for the newly independent government, entering the dark realm of underhanded politics. Throughout the novel, the author brings us back to Vikram's present location (Canada) where he is remembering his past.

My only complaint about this novel is in Vikram's character. A dark tragedy alters his emotions, rendering him to be a passionless man. But that lack of vigor makes him an absolute bore. There were a few scenes where I thought Vikram would suddenly break out of his shell, but he remains restrained throughout, allowing injustices to occur and his desires to collapse. I enjoyed the other characters though, especially Deepa and Njoroge, possibly the most passionate individuals in the novel.

I greatly appreciated the fearlessness in exhibiting race relations between Indians and everyone else in Kenya. The interplay appeared geniune, showing the social hierarchy amongst the races (the British, Indians, then blacks at the bottom). This hierarchy gets flipped after Kenya's independence, leaving the Indians in the middle again. But since the majority of Indians did not support the blacks during the freedom struggle, they become the scapegoats for the newly freed country's problems, leading to mass deportations, etc. Most of the race relations are viewed from Vikram's serene point of view.

I also appreciated the detailed characters, such as Mahesh Uncle who backs the Mau Mau in their fight against the British, and his relationship with Vikram.

Great book overall, excellent for those who want a greater understanding of the aftermath of colonialism.

A remarkable novel.......2006-06-21

Vassanji tells the compelling story of Virkram Lall, an East African Indian who almost inadvertently becomes involved in several massive corruption scandals in early post-independence Kenya. But the heartline of the story is the thrwarted love-affair between his sister and his best friend, a black African, and Vikram's terrifying childhood experiences and deep personal loss during the Mau-Mau rebellion against British colonial rule in Kenya. The novel is equal parts Kenyan history, love story, and political thriller seen from the unusual point of view of a tightly-knit immigrant Punjabi family.

Vassanji has writen a superb novel. It is moving, entertaining and meaningful, and that is a hard-to-beat cocktail. The style is lucid and even occassionally lyrically beautiful (the childhood part stands out). In many ways it is a complex novel with a great deal of detail but Vassanji pulls everything elegantly together.

Highly recommended for everyone but particularly readers with interest in East Africa and it's remarkable history.

Ugly, but beautifully written.......2006-06-17

In this story Vassanji does an amazing job at creating a dynamic character who is both flawed and heroic, hence the well-suited name. The reader will sympathize and shame Vikram throughout his journey from a carefree childhood that is gradually littered with racial and social complications to an adulthood that intensifies to corruption. This book truly makes one question the delicate line of moral perception. He makes the story even more brilliant by setting it in a socially and politically charged Kenya struggling for independence from British colonial rule.

This book takes patience to read, I don't recommend it for unmotivated readers. (you know who you are, you have a book you bought last year with the bookmark in a perma-sandwich on pg 10). However, if you do you will be rewarded, and I am quite sure you will be impressed how it illuminates the suffering of one's journey. A very memorable and intelligent read.

Africa.......2006-04-07

It was a very educational book, and made me realize that we often forget that africa has much multiculturalism. As in indian i found it interesting to see the views of indians who have left india much earlier than those who came to north america. I learned alot. I found vassanji to ramble on detail at times. but you get used to it.
it was a good book. but it was a long read, andon only character that made me not wanna put it down was Njoroge.

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When She Was Queen
M.G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Anchor Canada
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

The Gunny Sack

ASIN: 0385661770
Release Date: 2006-10-17

Book Description

“My father lost my mother one evening in a final round of gambling at the poker table,” writes the narrator of “When She Was Queen,” the title story of a new collection by bestselling novelist and two-time winner of the Giller Prize, M.G. Vassanji. That fateful evening in Kenya becomes “the obsessive and dark centre” of the young man’s existence and leads him, years later in Toronto, to unearth an even darker family secret.

In “The Girl With The Bicycle,” a man witnesses a woman from his hometown of Dar es Salaam spit at a corpse as it lies in state at a Toronto mosque. As he struggles to fathom her strange behaviour, he finds himself prey to memories and images from the past–and to perilous yearnings that could jeopardize his comfortable, middle-aged life.

Still reeling from the impact of his wife’s betrayal, a man decides to stop in on an old college friend in “Elvis, Raja.” But he soon realizes that it’s not always wise to visit the past as he finds himself trapped in a most curious household, where Elvis Presley has replaced the traditional Hindu gods.

The other stories in the collection also feature exceptional lives transplanted. A young man returns to his roots in India, hoping to find his uncle and, perhaps, a bride. Instead, he becomes a reluctant guru to the residents of his ancestral village. A mukhi must choose between granting the final sacrilegious wish of a dying man and abiding by religious custom in a community that considers him a representative of God. A woman is torn between the voice of her dead husband–a cold and grim-natured atheist–and her new, kind and loving husband whose faith nevertheless places constraints on her as a woman. On Halloween night, a scientist lays bare his horrifying plan to seek vengeance on the man who thwarted his career.

Set variously in Kenya, Canada, India, Pakistan, and the American Midwest, these poignant and evocative stories portray migrants negotiating the in-between worlds of east and west, past and present, secular and religious. Richly detailed and full of vivid characters, the stories are worlds unto themselves, just as a dusty African street full of bustling shops is a world, and so is the small matrix of lives enclosed by an intimate Toronto neighbourhood. It is the smells and sentiments and small gestures that constitute life, and of these Vassanji is a master.

Vassanji’s seventh book and his second collection of short stories, When She Was Queen was shortlisted for the 2006 Toronto Book Award. The jury said: "Vassanji's Naipaulian language is like a sharp short knife that cuts through the superficial and gets to the heart and soul of the narrative.”

From the Hardcover edition.

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Secrets... All the Way till the End
A good book !
Boring. Discuss.
Against the current...
Wow - I loved this book!

The Book of Secrets: A Novel
M. G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Picador USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
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ASIN: 0312140835

Book Description

In 1988, a retired schoolteacher named Pius Fernandes receives an old diary found in the back room of an East African shop. Written in 1913 by a British colonial administrator, the diary captivates Fernandes, who begins to research the coded history he encounters in its terse, laconic entries. What he uncovers is a story of forbidden liaisons and simmering vengeances, family secrets and cultural exiles--a story that leads him on an investigative journey through his own past and Africa's.

Customer Reviews:

Secrets... All the Way till the End.......2006-10-13

From the book, I found that M. G. Vassanji (an Indian descent from Eastern Africa) has an excellent grasp of history and well understanding of local cultures around his childhood region. He turned these ingredients into a recipe and prepared them into this novel. The historical accounts were extremely thoughtful and entertaining. Local taboos, customs, habits were all exploited by Mr. Vassanji in great lengths.

During some of the novel Indian descendant characters life experiences in England, he has vividly enliven his characters feeling being a second-class citizen for not being whites; and vice-versa being other than blacks during the Kenya and Tanzania pre-independence moments, other races were also allocated into second-rate citizens. It is a socially true prejudice which was more rampant during the years after WW II.

I also found it interesting, that many words in Kenyan and/or Indian may have been of Arabian origins, such as "kitabu". Kitabu = kitab (Indonesian) = book (English).

This book was written in Pius Fernandes' (his chief protagonist) point of view. Pius was a history teacher at Kikon, British East India during the colonial reign. It started when Pius found a very old diary of Alfred Corbin from 1913. He traced Corbin's experiences up to when Corbin stopped writing at all. Becoming curious, Pius started his own journey into researching what had become of Corbin and other main characters of this novel. Eventually, it was Pius himself who will get entwined into his old memories.

Mr. Vassanji is a real smooth-operator, moving between Pius (the more recent character) and older characters, moving between 1913 to end of WW I to end of WW II to 1988, when he found Corbin's diary. Another unsolved remaining secret at the end was whether Ali was Pipa's real son or not was never revealed by the author. Really "A Book of Secrets."

A very good, commendable read. I like it, a four-star.

A good book !.......2005-03-13

I liked this book a lot. Mr. Vassanji is a v. good story teller.

Boring. Discuss........2005-02-03

In M. G. Vassanji's The Book Of Secrets one would expect to find a world of intrigue and mystery. One would expect to be as caught up with this story as a wife reading love letters to her husband that she didn't write. Nothing that compelling here. The title, it seems, is just a marketing ploy.
It's true, a reader could find plenty to talk about in this award-winning book. It has many themes that are worthy of conversation. Discuss amongst yourselves: In searching for the truth behind human motivations, it is likely only more questions will be found. Or, Human drama is more intrapersonal in peaceful times and interpersonal in times of world conflict. Or, Despite a setting unfamiliar to most Canadians, this novel could just as easily be set in Canada's history. But reading group fodder aside, this book is still boring.
It is simply hard to care about who the father of Miriamu's child is. Was it Pipa? Was it Alfred Corbin? Was it her step-father? Who cares? While this might seem callous, Vassanji does not make you feel enough concern for these characters to garner much interest. As the novel begins, it appears to revolve mostly around a British colonialist named Alfred Corbin. A little too quickly the focus switches to Pipa, an Indian immigrant. And near the end the focus is on Pius Fernandes, a local teacher who was researching the lives of the aforementioned characters. The only one of these characters developed sufficiently is Pipa. A reader can readily see what drives him and it is easy to feel concern and compassion for this man. However, Corbin was dropped like the proverbial hot potato just as a reader would start to find him compelling. Pius, is explored a little more in depth than Corbin but not adequately to suggest any plausible reason why he is obsessed with the mysteries of the past.
All in all, this book was a let down from the onset. Given the title The Book of Secrets one expects to be engaged more than this, but without sufficient character development the plot falls flat.

Against the current..........2004-07-15

I'll go against the current, here. Yes, the book depicted an unusual and interesting side of African history (hence the 2 stars), but I did not find the story itself engaging and certainly not fascinating. I guess I was expecting too much from the winner of a literary book prize. You won't be breathtaken, but you may find you know more about early East Africa than you did before you read the book.

Wow - I loved this book!.......2004-06-19

I read this after having lived in East Africa for a few years. It remains one of my all time favourites. Do yourself a favour and read it.

Uhuru Street: Short Stories (African Writers Series)

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Uhuru Street: Short Stories (African Writers Series)
M. G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Heinemann
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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The Book of Secrets: A Novel

ASIN: 0435905856

Book Description

By the two-time winner of the Giller Prize for his novels The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

Uhuru Street is M.G. Vassanji’s stunning book of linked stories, set within the Asian community of Dar es Salaam. With delicate strokes, and with irony and humour, Vassanji brings alive the characters who live and work in the shops and tenements of Uhuru Street; among them: Roshan Mattress, so called because of her free and easy ways; a street-wise orphan fighting for survival; a Goan dressmaker who entertains her employers with local gossip; and a servant who opens up the world for the children in his charge, until he oversteps his bounds and has to leave. As the younger generation searches for a new destiny, and the older fiercely holds on to the past, Uhuru Street resonates with the moment of moving on, of leaving the place where we have roots, knowing that things will never be the same.

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A Migration Tale

No New Land
M.G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Emblem Editions
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Amriika
The Book of Secrets: A Novel
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ASIN: 0771087225
Release Date: 1997-10-11

Book Description

Nurdin Lalani and his family, Asian immigrants from Africa, have come to the Toronto suburb of Don Mills only to find that the old world and its values pursue them. A genial orderly at a downtown hospital, he has been accused of sexually assaulting a girl. Although he is innocent, traditional propriety prompts him to question the purity of his own thoughts. Ultimately, his friendship with the enlightened Sushila offers him an alluring freedom from a past that haunts him, a marriage that has become routine, and from the trials of coping with teenage children. Introducing us to a cast of vividly drawn characters within this immigrant community, Vassanji is a keen observer of lives caught between one world and another.

Customer Reviews:

A Migration Tale.......2006-04-17

This book is set in Toronto at some point in the late 1970s/early 1980s and follows an Indian family from West Africa and their immigrant story. It is filled with little, poignant moments and many quiet, yet memorable characters that together, paint a very moving portrait of people in transition. Best of all, Vassanji is able to capture all this in an easy going, understated style. Highly recommend to all, but especially for those with interest in immigrant/minority experiences.

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BOOK OF SECRETS : A NOVEL
M. G. VASSANJI
Manufacturer: PICADOR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000KUQ7BQ

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"Eery and Timely"

AMRIIKA
M. G. VASSANJI
Manufacturer: McCLELLAND & STEWART
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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The Book of Secrets: A Novel
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ASIN: 0771087233

Book Description

Amriika is a novel of betrayal, disillusionment, and discovery set in America during three highly charged decades in the nation’s history. In the late sixties, Ramji, a student from Dar es Salaam, East Africa, arrives in an America far different from the one he dreamed about, one caught up in anti-war demonstrations, revolutionary lifestyles, and spiritual quests. As Ramji finds himself pulled by the tumultuous currents of those troubled times, he is swept up in events whose consequences will haunt him for years to come. Decades later in a changed America, having recently left a marriage and a suburban existence, an older Ramji, passionately in love, finds himself drawn into a set of circumstances which hold terrifying reminders of the past and its unanswered questions.

Customer Reviews:

"Eery and Timely".......2001-10-01

The main character in this book, Ramji, finds himself in exactly the same situation in 1995 in Los Angeles as he had been in 1970 in Boston: harbouring a suspected bomber. In one case it had been an American middle-class radical woman, in the second case a young man, who had at one time been an anti-Iranian activist supported by the American government, and has now, as an outraged Muslim, bombed a bookstore in the Midwest.

After the shocking events at the World Trade Center, this book seems to have an eery timeliness to it. While not exactly predicting terrorism in the magnitude in which it recently occurred, this book does take a hard look at why America is often both loved and hated; more importantly, it shows how slippery the slope can be, in today's world, between political commitment and sympathy for the causes behind terrorism, and the barbaric act of terrorism itself. On the way it shows the conflicts within the world of Islam as well.

I was a city boy, a soft Asian: novelist MG Vassanji describes growing up with graft in Tanzania.(PSYCHOLOGY)(corruption): An article from: New Internationalist
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I was a city boy, a soft Asian: novelist MG Vassanji describes growing up with graft in Tanzania.(PSYCHOLOGY)(corruption): An article from: New Internationalist
M.G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Digital

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ASIN: B000MGV3BW
Release Date: 2007-01-09

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Internationalist, published by Thomson Gale on December 1, 2006. The length of the article is 1725 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Citation Details
Title: I was a city boy, a soft Asian: novelist MG Vassanji describes growing up with graft in Tanzania.(PSYCHOLOGY)(corruption)
Author: M.G. Vassanji
Publication: New Internationalist (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2006
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Issue: 396 Page: 8(4) Distributed by Thomson Gale

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The Assassin's Song
M.G. Vassanji
Manufacturer: Doubleday Canada
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

The magnificent new novel from two-time Giller-winning author M.G. Vassanji, a sweeping story set in India and North America.

The Assassin’s Song opens in the 1960s in a village in Western India, the site of the thirteenth-century Sufi shrine of Pirbaag. Karsan Dargawalla is next in line after his father to assume the lordship of the shrine. But Karsan longs to be “just ordinary”–to be a great cricketer and play for his country and, at the urging of a truck driver, to learn more and more about the world. In secret he applies to go to Harvard, and when he is accepted, he can’t resist the opportunity–though this means profound disappointment for his father and heartbreak for his mother. Soon the intellectual excitement and discoveries of his new life compel him to abdicate his succession to the throne. But even as he succeeds in his “ordinary life” – becoming a professor, marrying and having a son, leading a charmed suburban existence in British Columbia – his heritage continues to haunt him. Finally when a personal tragedy strikes in Canada, and Pirbaag is devastated by communal violence, he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.

A story of grand historical sweep and intricate personal drama, a stunning evocation of the physical and emotional landscape of a man caught between filial obligation and personal yearning, between the ancient and the modern – The Assassin’s Song is a luminous novel.

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