M. G. Vassanji
M.G. Vassanji, C.M. is a Canadian novelist.
Although of South Asian heritage, Vassanji grew up in East Africa--he was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950, and raised in Tanzania. While attending the University of Nairobi he won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study nuclear physics. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to Canada in 1978 to work at the Chalk River nuclear laboratories, in the theoretical physics branch in Chalk River, Ontario. In 1980, he moved to Toronto to begin his writing career. In 1981, Vassanji, his wife Nurjehan Aziz, and a few others founded The Toronto South Asian Review (TSAR) which later spawned the publishing company TSAR Publications. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.
Published work
Vassanji has published six novels:
- The Gunny Sack (1989)
- No New Land (1991)
- The Book of Secrets (1994)
- Amriika (1999)
- The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003)
- The Assassin's Song (2007)
He is also the author of two collections of short stories, Uhuru Street (1992) and When She Was Queen (2005).
Themes
The focus of Vassanji's work is the situation of South Asians in East Africa. As a secondary theme, members of this community (like himself) later undergo a second migration to Europe, Canada, or the United Sates. Vassanji examines how the lives of his characters are affected by these migrations: "[the Indian diaspora] is very important...once I went to the US, suddenly the Indian connection became very important: the sense of origins, trying to understand the roots of India that we had inside us" (Kanaganayakam, p. 21). Vassanji looks at the relations between the Indian community, the native Africans and the colonial administration. Though few of his characters ever return to India, the country's presence looms throughout his work.
Vassanji is concerned with the effects of history and the interaction between personal and public histories. The colonial history of Kenya and Tanzania serves as the backdrop for his work, but it is the personal histories of the main characters that drive the narrative. Vassanji's presentation of the past is never cut and dried. He avoids the impression of, a simple, linear, historical truth emerging. In much of his work the mysteries of the past remain unresolved. (Kanaganayakam p. 22).
Awards and honours
Vassanji's work has received considerable critical acclaim. The Gunny Sack won a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990. In 1994 he won the Harbourfront Festival Prize in recognition of his "achievement in and contribution to the world of letters." That year he was also one of twelve Canadians chosen for Maclean's Magazine's Honour Roll. Vassanji won the inaugural Giller Prize in 1994 for The Book of Secrets. He again won the Giller Prize in 2003 for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. He was the first writer to win the Giller Prize more than once. (In 2004, Alice Munro became the prize's second repeat winner.) In 2006, When She Was Queen was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award.
His latest work, The Assassin's Song has been nominated for the 2007 Giller Prize.
In 2005 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
Reference
Kanaganayakam, C. 1991.
External link
- Official Website
- M.G. Vassanji Emory University, Department of English
- Interview and excerpt from The Assassin's Song, online from CBC Words at Large