Friday, March 6, 2009

Vassanji turns to non fiction

Novelist MG Vassanji has turned to non fiction and is going to write on India, the homeland of his ancestors.

Vassanji’s grandparents left India to settle in Africa. An African by birth, Vassanji’s relationship with India in childhood was complex and contradictory, fed by legends and stories. Now, in this powerfully moving tale of personal discovery, he explores his connection to the land that for so long was a place only of the imagination for him. Part travelogue and description, part history and meditation, and above all a quest for a lost homeland, A Place Within begins with diary entries from Vassanji’s very first wide-eyed trip to India in 1993, then moves on to accounts from his subsequent and obsessive visits. An intimate chronicle filled with fantastic stories and unforgettable characters, A Place Within is rich with images of bustling city streets and contrasting Indian landscapes, from the southern tip of India to the Himalayan foothills, from the Bay of Bengal to the Arabian Sea. Here, too, are the amazing histories of Delhi, Shimla, Gujarat and Kerala, and of Vassanji’s own family, members of the Khoja sect that draws on both Hinduism and Islam.

Vassanji is the author of six novels: The Gunny Sack, which won a Commonwealth Prize; No New Land; The Book of Secrets, which won the very first Giller Prize; Amriika; The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, which also received the Giller Prize in 2003, and The Assassin’s Song; which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. He is also the author of two collections of short fiction, Uhuru Street and Elvis Raja.

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