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English Specific (DSE - 2) Literature of Indian Diaspora: Unit - 1 The Book of Secrets

M.G. Vassanji is a renowned Canadian author of Indian descent. He was born in Kenya to Indian parents and later moved to Tanzania. He studied in the U.S. and immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. Vassanji has published five novels and collections of short stories and essays. His novels deal with themes of exile, identity, and the Indian diaspora experience. Vassanji's novels The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall both won the prestigious Giller Prize, marking his significant contributions to literature on the Indian diaspora.

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516 views2 pages

English Specific (DSE - 2) Literature of Indian Diaspora: Unit - 1 The Book of Secrets

M.G. Vassanji is a renowned Canadian author of Indian descent. He was born in Kenya to Indian parents and later moved to Tanzania. He studied in the U.S. and immigrated to Canada in the 1970s. Vassanji has published five novels and collections of short stories and essays. His novels deal with themes of exile, identity, and the Indian diaspora experience. Vassanji's novels The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall both won the prestigious Giller Prize, marking his significant contributions to literature on the Indian diaspora.

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Sr Chandrodaya J
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English Specific (DSE – 2)

Literature of Indian Diaspora


Unit – 1 The Book of Secrets.
Moyez G Vassanji , a prestigious literary member of Indian Diaspora and recipient of several
literary awards, is Canada's latest literary person. Like many others, he is an Indian expatriate (emigrant)
separated from the subcontinent by generations.

M.G. Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya on 30th May 1950 to Gulamhussein Vassanji and
Daulatkhanu Nanji. His family was a part of community of Indians who had migrated to Africa.

When Vassanji was five, his father died and his mother ran a clothing store to support her five
children. His family moved to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania when Asians were forced to leave Kenya after
the independence in 1963.

While attending the University of Nairobi, Vassanji won a scholarship to the Massachusetts (a
state in New England, one of the original 13 colonies) Institute of Technology (MIT) to study nuclear
physics. He went to the United States to join MIT in 1970. In 1978 he earned a Ph.D. in theoretical
nuclear physics at the University of Pennsylvania. In the same year he immigrated to Canada to work at
the Chalk River nuclear power laboratories in Chalk River, Ontario. In 1980, he moved to Toronto and
began writing. He joined the University of Toronto, where he worked as a research associate and
lecturer in physics from 1980 and 1989 and published widely.
In 1980s Vassanji began to dedicate himself seriously to his longstanding passion, writing.
After completing his doctorate in nuclear physics, he felt that nothing would make him so happy as
writing. He felt that he had too many stories to tell. Thus he abandoned academic world to pursue the
unpredictable writer's life full time.
Vassanji's Literary Career:
Vassanji's literary career was launched with the publication of The Gunny Sack. It was his first
attempt at fiction.
Vassanji has published five novels,
1. The Gunny Sack (1989),
2. No New Land (1991),
3. The Book of Secrets (1994),
4. Amriika (1999) and
5. The In-Between World Of Vikram Lall (2003).
➢ His other books include a collection of short stories named Uhuru Street (1992)
➢ A collection of essays, A Meeting of Streams: South Asian Canadian Literature (1985).
➢ In 1989 he, with his wife Nurjehan Aziz, founded and edited the first issue of the Toronto South
Asian Review [TSAR]
➢ At present he lives in Toronto with his wife, Nurjehan Aziz, and has two children, Anil and
Kabir.
Prizes and Awards:
• In 1990 his first book The Gunny Sack won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best book in
African region.
• In 1994 Vassanji's third novel The Book of Secrets won the Inaugural Giller Prize, Canada's
richest literary award for a work of fiction.
• Vassanji won the Giller Prize for the second time for his fifth novel, The In-Between World of
Vikram Lall.
• In 1994 Vassanji was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize in recognition of his achievement
Diasporic articulation is evident in the novels of M.G. Vassanji. They are concerned with exile,
memory, diasporic consciousness, longing for return, nostalgia, search for identity and sense of
belonging. They deal with Indians living in East Africa. Some of these migrants undergo a second
migration to Europe, Canada, or the United States. Vassanji is concerned with how these migrations
affect the lives and identities of his characters, an issue that is personal to him as well.

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