Vassanji, M.G. 1950- (Moyez G.

Vassanji)
Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series
COPYRIGHT 2009 Gale

Vassanji, M.G. 1950- (Moyez G. Vassanji)

PERSONAL:

Born May 30, 1950, in Nairobi, Kenya; immigrated to United States, 1970;
immigrated to Canada, 1978; son of Gulamhussein Vassanji and Daulatkhanu
Nanji; married Nurjehan Aziz (a laboratory researcher), July 14, 1979; children:
Anil. Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, B.S., 1974; University of
Pennsylvania, Ph.D., 1978.

ADDRESSES:

HomeToronto, Ontario, Canada. AgentWestwood Creative Artists Ltd., 94

Harbord St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 1G6, Canada.

CAREER:

Af liated with Atomic Energy of Canada at Chalk River power station, 1978-80;
University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, research associate and lecturer in
physics, 1980-89; full-time writer, 1989.

AWARDS, HONORS:
Commonwealth Writers Prize for best rst book in the African region, Book
Trust (England), 1990, for The Gunny Sack; Giller Prize, 1994, for The Book of
Secrets, and 2003, for The In-between World of Vikram Lall; Bressani Literary
Prize; Harbourfront Festival Prize; made a Member of the Order of Canada,
2005.

WRITINGS:

NOVELS

The Gunny Sack, Heinemann International (London, England), 1989, Doubleday

Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

No New Land, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1991.

The Book of Secrets, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1994,
Picador (New York, NY), 1996.

Amriika, McClelland & Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1999.

The In-between World of Vikram Lall, Doubleday Canada (Toronto, Ontario,

Canada), 2003, Knopf (New York, NY), 2004.

The Assassin's Song, Knopf (New York, NY), 2007.

SHORT STORIES

Uhuru Street, Heinemann International (London, England), 1991, McClelland &

Stewart (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1992.

Elvis, Raja, Penguin (New York, NY), 2005.

When She Was Queen, Doubleday Canada (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

OTHER

(Editor) A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature (essays), TSAR

Publications (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 1985.

(Editor) Kwai-yun Li, The Palm Leaf Fan & Other Stories, TSAR Publications
(Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2006.

Founder and editor of Toronto South Asian Review (renamed Toronto Review of
Contemporary Writing Abroad), 1980. Work represented in anthologies,
including Journey Prize Anthology, McClelland & Stewart, 1989. Contributor to
periodicals, including Canadian Literature and New Internationalist.

SIDELIGHTS:

M.G. Vassanji is the author of several acclaimed works of ction, including The
Book of Secrets and The In-between World of Vikram Lall, both of which garnered
Canada's prestigious Giller Prize. Raised in Kenya and Tanzania, Vassanji came
to America in 1970 without any intention of ultimately writing for a living. After
eight years of higher education en route to becoming a physicist, he moved to
Canada. His literary interests were fueled by studies of Sanskrit that he began
in 1977. Eventually, Vassanji channeled his efforts toward writing ction. His
works included characters who, like the author, are of South Asian ancestry and
have come to North America after living through periods of political instability
in East Africa. Vassanji's rst novel, The Gunny Sack, took eight years to
complete and was published in 1989.
In The Gunny Sack Vassanji's narrator receives a bag lled with mementos from
his great-aunt. These objects prompt a series of stories that encompass four
generations of his family and speak of his ancestors' journey from India to
Africa and nally to Canada. In surveying the contents of the sack, the
protagonist discovers that his Islamic great-grandfather married twice, once to
a fellow Muslim and then later to his black great-grandmother. He follows the
course of his family's life in East Africa from a time when the territory was
under European rule to the period when it was shifting from colonial to
independent status. The novel also focuses on the narrator's own background at
a school that teaches its students to behave as English gentlemen and in a black
military in which he serves as an Asian-blooded minority. In World Literature
Today Uma Parameswaran praised The Gunny Sack as "one of the best novels to
appear on the contemporary Canadian literary scene."

Vassanji again explores the subject of South Asian migration from Africa to
Canada in his second novel, No New Land. Its protagonist, Nurdin Lalani, is
compelled, by revolution, to move his family from East Africa to Don Mills, a part
of metropolitan Toronto, Ontario. In Canada, the Lalanis live in a deteriorating
apartment building with fellow East-African Asians. Throughout the story
Vassanji shows how adjusting to the new environment proves dif cult for the
community. They are regularly discriminated against by native-born Canadians
and swarmed by secular temptations. Nurdin, in particular, must support his
family with a succession of low-paying jobs and later ponders having an affair
with a childhood acquaintance whom he accidentally meets again in Canada. His
attempt to adjust to life in North America is further exacerbated when a woman
erroneously accuses him of rape. According to Victor Dwyer of Maclean's,
Vassanji tells the Lalanis' story "with forceful eloquence." Books in Canada
reviewer Janice Kulyk Keefer further praised the work, saying that "at its best,
No New Land rede nes and extends our sense of the possibilities of
Canadian writing."

Vassanji next completed The Book of Secrets, "at once a story of the British
Empire in Africa and a very postmodern meditation on the allures and pitfalls of
narrative," observed a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. The novel concerns the
diary of Alfred Corbin, an English colonial administrator stationed in British East
Africa in 1913. Some seventy years later, the diary comes into the possession of
Pius Fernandes, an Indian-born retired schoolteacher who decides to unlock its
mysteries and, in doing so, discovers an unlikely link from Corbin's life to his
own. In the words of Podium critic Ray Deonandan, The Book of Secrets "is an
encompassing tale that meanders through lives, but makes its way back to the
centre thread like improvisational jazz, as soothing and emotion-provoking.
Beyond the obligatory travails of forbidden love and a dabbling in magic realism
are explored truths of life, its organic qualities and tonesno implausible
characters or dismissively unlikely events." Writing in Booklist, Thomas Gaughan
described the novel as a "knowing meditation on storytelling, the condition of
exile, and what can't be fully known."

The In-between World of Vikram Lall examines the turbulent history of

postcolonial Africa through the eyes of its narrator, a Kenyan-born Indian who
now lives in exile in Canada. Opening in 1953, the work focuses on the complex
relationship between Vikram, his sister, Deepa, and their African friend,
Njoroge. The trio's idyllic childhood is shattered when their English neighbors
are slaughtered by Mau Mau rebels, who seek independence from British rule.
Later, after moving to Nairobi, Vikram serves as a middleman in the new Kenyan
government headed by Jomo Kenyatta, a Mau Mau sympathizer, while Njoroge,
who is courting Deepa, becomes involved with the political opposition.
According to Peter Gordon, writing in the Asian Review of Books, The In-between
World of Vikram Lall "has something for just about everyone: a sweeping multi-
generational saga of the birth of a nation, a Romeo-and-Juliet love story
between an Indian girl and an African boy, political commentary, the
degradation of idealism and hope to corruption and hypocrisy." A contributor in
African Business also praised the novel, calling it "a profound and careful
examination of one man's search for his place in the world; it also takes up
themes that have run through Vassanji's work, such as the nature of community
in a volatile society, the relations between colony and colonizer, and the
inescapable presence of the past."

A number of reviewers also complimented the tone of the author's narrative.

The In-between World of VikramLall "is a good example of how the post-colonial
novel should be written, dispassionately, avoiding the easy pitfalls of nostalgia
and essentialism," Helon Habila stated in the Guardian. Craig Taylor, writing in
Quill & Quire, similarly noted: "The prose of Vassanji's fth novel tumbles out so
easily it looks effortless. It's the style of no style; instead of pyrotechnics and
cheap suspense Vassanji favours a long fuse." A contributor in Publishers Weekly
stated that Vassanji writes "with a deftness and evenhandedness that
distinguish him as a diligent student of political and historical complexities and a
riveting storyteller."

Set in the 1960s, The Assassin's Song details the life of Karsan Dargawalla, the
reluctant successor to the role of the protector of Pirbaag, a small village in the
troubled Indian state of Gujarat. When he is accepted into Harvard, Karsan
escapes to the United States, where he revels in his freedom. Decades later,
following the death of his parents, Karsan returns to his homeland to nd
Pirbaag in ruins, destroyed during the region's deadly 2002 riots, which
prompts him to reexamine his spiritual beliefs. Vassanji "crafts an intense and
haunting work of ction," noted Terry Hong in the Christian Science Monitor.
Timothy Peters, reviewing The Assassin's Song in the San Francisco Chronicle,
remarked that the author "has succeeded in creating a complex, multifaceted
drama, one that interweaves history, religion and politics with a vibrant personal
story. Like most such novels, it is the personal story that resonates the most, and
in this case, the personal story is that of Karsan, his struggle for independence
and, in the end, redemption."

Vassanji once told CA: "I feel as much African as Asian, and I have lived in the
United States as well as Canada; labels based on nationality are a convenience
and always slippery."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Business, January, 2005, review of The In-between World of Vikram Lall, p.
65.

Booklist, February 1, 1996, Thomas Gaughan, review of The Book of Secrets, p.

918; September 1, 2004, Gillian Engberg, review of The In-between World of
Vikram Lall, p. 66; August 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of The Assassin's Song,
p. 32.

Books in Canada, April, 1991, Janice Kulyk Keefer, review of No New Land, p. 42.
Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal, spring, 2004, Nicholas Birns, review of The In-
Between World of Vikram Lall, p. 144.

Christian Science Monitor, September 4, 2007, Terry Hong, "In The Assassin's
Song, a Young Indian Seeks to Flee His Past."

Guardian (London, England), September 18, 2004, Helon Habila, "Memories of

Mau Mau," review of The In-between World of Vikram Lall.

Kirkus Reviews, August 1, 2004, review of The In-between World of Vikram Lall, p.
713; July 15, 2007, review of The Assassin's Song.

Library Journal, August 1, 2004, Marc Kloszewski, review of The In-between

World of Vikram Lall, p. 71; August 1, 2007, Leslie Patterson, review of The
Assassin's Song, p. 75.

Maclean's, April 15, 1991, Victor Dwyer, review of No New Land, p. 64.

New Statesman, December 6, 2004, Jason Cowley, "Half and Half," review of
The In-between World of Vikram Lall, p. 55.

New Yorker, August 20, 2007, review of The Assassin's Song, p. 83.

Publishers Weekly, December 11, 1995, review of The Book of Secrets, p. 56;
November 10, 2003, "Giller Prize Goes to Vassanji," p. 16; July 26, 2004,
review of The In-between World of Vikram Lall, p. 37; June 18, 2007, review of
The Assassin's Song, p. 35.
Quill & Quire, February, 1991, review of No New Land, p. 32; December, 1999,
Gerald Hannon, review of Amriika; November, 2003, Craig Taylor, review of The
In-between World of Vikram Lall; January, 2006, Laurel Smith, review of When
She Was Queen; October, 2007, Tara Lee, review of The Assassin's Song.

San Francisco Chronicle, August 28, 2007, Timothy Peters, review of The
Assassin's Song, p. E2.

Saturday Night, June, 1991, review of No New Land, p. 44.

Time International, October 15, 2007, Simon Robinson, "Tangled Roots," review
of The Assassin's Song, p. 52.

World Literature Today, winter, 1991, Uma Parameswaran, review of The Gunny
Sack, p. 177; winter, 1995, Michael Thorpe, review of The Book of Secrets, p. 210;
September-December, 2005, Charles P. Sarvan, review of The In-between World
of Vikram Lall.

ONLINE

Asian Review of Books Online,http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/

(http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/) (August 14, 2004), Peter Gordon,
review of The In-between World of Vikram Lall.

Blog Critics,http://blogcritics.org/ (http://blogcritics.org/) (August 21, 2007),

Richard Marcus, review of The Assassin's Song.

DesiJournal.com,http://www.desijournal.com/ (http://www.desijournal.com/)
(August 14, 2004), Poornima Apte, review of The In-between World of Vikram
Lall.
M.G. Vassanji Home Page,http://www.mgvassanji.com
(http://www.mgvassanji.com) (July 1, 2008).

Mostly Fiction,http://www.mostly ction.com/ (http://www.mostly ction.com/)

(October 12, 2004), Mary Whipple, review of The In-between World of Vikram
Lall; (September 20, 2007), Poornima Apte, review of The Assassin's Song.

Podium Online,http://www.podium.on.ca/ (September 6, 1999), Ray Deonandan,

review of The Book of Secrets.

OTHER

In-between World of M.G. Vassanji (documentary), Cogent-Benger Productions,

2006.

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