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Asian Heritage in Canada
Authors
Vassanji, M. G.
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Moyez G. Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya in 1950 but raised
in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before coming
to Canada in 1978. Vassanji is the founding editor of the literary
magazine The Toronto South Asian Review.
Renamed and with a broader scope as The Toronto
Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad, the magazine gave voice to immigrant Canadians. TSAR
Publications began publishing monographs in 1985. Vassanji
and his family reside in Toronto. In February, 2005, Vassanji was named a Member of the Order of Canada for his contribution to arts/writing. |
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Fiction
Amriika
Toronto: M&S, 1999.
Toronto: M&S, 2000. (Pbk. ed.)
9th floor PS8593.A87 A47 1999
Publisher's Synopsis (M&S ,1999)
[This is] a remarkable novel of personal and political awakening
that spans three decades and explores the eternal quest for
home. It is a quintessentially North American novel, told
from the point of view of a man from Dar es Salaam, East Africa.
In 1968, Ramji, a student, 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 he gradually
grows apart from his community of foreign students, Ramji
finds himself pulled by the tumultuous currents of the times
... . Much later, with his marriage faltering, and living
a suburban life in a changed America, he meets a young woman
from Zanzibar, and feels that a different, more authentic
life is possible -- until a mysterious visitor from Ramji's
past arrives in their midst. |
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Fiction
The Assassin's Song
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2007.
9th floor PS8593 .A87 A88 2007
Publisher's Synopsis (from its website)
M.G. Vassanji’s magnificent new novel provides further proof of his unique, wide ranging and profound genius. The Assassin’s Song is a shining study of the conflict between ancient loyalties and modern desires, a conflict that creates turmoil the world over – and it is at once an intimate portrait of one man’s painful struggle to hold the earthly and the spiritual in balance.
In The Assassin’s Song, Karsan Dargawalla tells the story of the medieval Sufi shrine of Pirbaag, and his betrayal of its legacy. But Karsan’s conflicted attempt to settle accounts quickly blossoms into a layered tale that spans centuries: from the mysterious Nur Fazal’s spiritual journeys through thirteenth century India, to his shrine’s eventual destruction in the horrifying "riots" of 2002.
Awards and Honours
2007 Governor General's Literary Award--English--Fiction (Shortlist)
2007 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (Finalist)
2007 Scotiabank Giller Prize (Shortlist) |
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Fiction
The Book of Secrets
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1994.
9th floor PS8593
.A87 B66 1994
London: Picador, 1996.
New York: Picador USA, 1996.
New York: Picador USA, 1997 (Pbk. ed.)
Toronto: M&S. (Trade pbk. ed.)
Publisher's Synopsis (McClelland and Stewart, 1994)
The Book of Secrets is a spellbinding novel of generations,
which begins in 1988 in Dar es Salaam when the 1913 diary
of a British colonial administrator is found in a shopkeeper's
backroom. The diary enflames the curiosity of retired schoolteacher
Pius Fernandes, and his exploration of the stories it contains
gradually connects the past with the present.
Awards and Honours
1994 Giller Prize.
(Winner)
1994 F.G. Bressani Prize (Winner) |
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Fiction
The Gunny Sack
Oxford: Heinemann, 1989.
9th floor PS8593
.A87 G86 1989
Publisher's Synopsis
The novel is both the story of one extended family's arrival
and existence in East Africa as well as a repository for the
collective memory and oral history of many other African Asians.
As one of the first African Asian novels of its kind, The
Gunny Sack tells a tale deeply committed to both traditions
and to the future of contemporary Africa.
Awards and Honours
1990 Commonwealth
Writer's Prize-Regional Prize: Caribbean and Canada-Best
First Book (Winner). |
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Fiction
The In-Between Life of Vikram Lall
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2003.
9th floor PS8593
.A97 I5 2003
Publisher's Synopsis
It is 1953 in colonial Kenya, and eight-year-old Vikram Lall
witnesses the celebration of Queen Elizabeth's coronation,
even as the Mau Mau guerilla war challenges British rule.
...
We follow Vic from the changing Africa of the fifties, to
the sixties-- a time that holds immense promise. But when
that hope is betrayed by the corruption, fear and repression
of the seventies and eighties, Vic finds himself drawn into
the official orbit of graft and power-brokering. ...
Awards and Honours
2003 Giller
Prize (Winner)
2004 Commonwealth
Writers Prize--Best Book (Caribbean and Canada Region)(Nominated)
2004 Libris Award - Fiction Book of the Year (Canadian Booksellers Association)(Nominated)
2004 Torgi Literary Awards for Books in Alternative Formats (CNIB-Produced Fiction)(Nominated)
2004 Trillium
Book Award--English. (Nominated) |
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Fiction
No New Land: A Novel
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1991.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1997.
9th floor PS8593
.A87 N6 1997
Publisher's Synopsis (M&S, 1997)
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. ... Vassanji
is a keen observer of lives caught between one world and another. |
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Fiction
Uhuru Street: Short Stories
Toronto: M&S, 1992.
9th floor PS8593
.A87 U5 1992
Publisher's Synopsis
In this unique collection of linked stories, the curtain
is drawn back to reveal life in the Asian community of Dar
es Salaam, a port city on the east coast of Africa. ... The
stories take us from the late colonial days of the 1950s through
to the 1980s when many of the characters have moved away from
the confines of their community ...
Awards and Honours
The story "In the Quiet of a Sunday Afternoon" appeared in The Toronto South Asian Review and was shortlisted for the first annual awarding of The Journey Prize. It appeared in The Journey Prize Anthology: The Best Short Fiction From Canada's Literary Journals (Toronto: M&S, 1989).
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Fiction (Short stories)
When She Was Queen
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2005.
9th floor PS8593 .A87 W44 2005
Publisher's Synopsis
[A]n extraordinary collection of twelve stories that range in setting from newly independent East Africa to contemporary Toronto, from Partition-era India to Midwest America. |
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Anthology
Passages: Welcome Home to Canada
9th floor PS8081
.P39 2002
Vassanji, M.G. "Canada and Me: Finding Ourselves."
In Passages: Welcome Home to Canada. Initiated by Westwood
Creative Artists and the Dominion Institute. Toronto: Doubleday
Canada, 2002.
Contributors: Michelle Berry • Ying Chen • Brian
D. Johnson • Dany Laferriere • Alberto Manguel
• Anna Porter • Nino Ricci • Shyam Selvadurai
• M. G. Vassanji • Ken Wiwa • Moses Znaimer
This book grew out of the Dominion Institute's Memory Project.
Find out more at thememoryproject
website. |
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Anthology
The Monkey King and Other Stories
Vassanji, M.G.. "The Cycle of Revenge." In The Monkey King and Other Stories, edited by Griffin Ondaatje. Toronto: HarperCollins, 1995.. |
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Anthology
Tok. Book 5
9th floor PS8237 .T6 T54 2010
Vassanji, M.G. "Death at Number Sixty-nine." In Tok. Book 5, edited by Helen Walsh. Toronto: Zephyr Press, 2010, 151-157. |
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Non-fiction
A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature. (Edited
by Vassanji)
Toronto: TSAR Publications, 1985.
9th floor PS8089.5
.S68 M44 1985
"This volume of articles and essays grew out of the
proceedings of the
Conference on South Asian Canadian Literature on October 1-3,
1983,
organized by the Toronto South Asian review"--Acknowledgements. |
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Non-fiction (Travel/History)
A Place Within: Rediscovering India
Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2008.
9th floor PS8593 .A87 Z47 2008
Awards and Honours
2009 Governor General's Literary Award, Non-fiction, English Language (Winner)
Publisher's Synopsis
M.G. Vassanji's grandparents went to Africa from India. An African by birth, Vassanji's relationship to India in childhood had been complex and contradictory, fed by legends and stories. Now, in this powerfully moving tale of personal discovery, Vassanji explores his connection to the land that for so long was a place only of the imagination. |
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Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Genetsch, Martin. The Texture of Identity: The Fiction of MG Vassanji, Neil Bissoondath, and Rohinton Mistry. Toronto: TSAR, 2008.
9th floor PS8089.5 .S68 G45 2007
Kandiuk, Mary. "M. G. Vassanji." In Caribbean and South Asian Writers in Canada: A Bibliography of Their Works and of English-language Criticism. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2007, 211-218.
9th floor PS8089.5 .C37 K36 2007
Makokha, Justus Siboe. Reading M.G. Vassanji: A Contextual Approach to Asian African Fiction. Berlin: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller, 2009.
Makokha, Justus Kizito Siboe. The Worlds in Between of an Asian African Writer: A Post-colonial Reading of Selected Novels of M.G. Vassanji. Nairobi: Kenyatta University, 2006.
(M.A. Thesis)
Narula, Devika Khanna. South Asian Diaspora: Summer Blossoms in Winter Gardens: History, Memory and Identity in Canadian Fiction. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2005. (Includes one chapter focusing on The Gunny Sack, and another focusing on The Book of Secrets)
9th floor PS8089.5 .S68 N37 2005
Rahemtullah, Omme-Salma. "Interrogating "Indianness": Identity and Diasporic Consciousness Among South Asian Twice Migrants in Canada." M.A. diss., Ryerson University, 2007.
6th floor FC106 .S66 R34 2007
Roy, Hareshwar. "No New Land: A Story of Quest for Identity." In Indian Diasporic Literature: Text, Context and Interpretation, ed. Shalini Dube, 57-62. New Delhi: Shree Publishers, 2009.
9th floor PK5416 .I53 2009
Salaye, Narvadha. "Marginalisation and the Construction of South-Asian Identity in Novels by Rohinton Mistry, Shyam Selvadurai and Moyez Vassanji." M.A. diss., Université de Sherbrooke, 2002.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Samajdar, Saunak. "Rooting the Routes: Memory as the Ontology of the Expatriate in Vassanji's Writings." In The Expatriate Indian Writing in English. Vol. 1, ed. T. Vinoda and P. Shailaja, 2006, 197-208.
9th floor PR9489.6 .E96 2006 v.1 |
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