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Remember it wholesale: MG Vassanji's new novel Nostalgia cost him 15 years

Anyone familiar with writings of author MG Vassanji will know that lines from his latest novel, Nostalgia, could easily have come from any of his earlier narratives.

"We leap from one life into another, be it imperfectly, and hope [...] that the past does not catch up with us. But sometimes it does [...] Reminders of our discarded lives can not yet be completely blocked..."

Anyone familiar with MG Vassanji's writing will know that these lines, from his new novel Nostalgia, could easily have come from any of his earlier narratives. A theme running through Vassanji's work starting with the 1989 novel The Gunny Sack is the imposition of the past on the present,

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