The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji (English) Paperback Book

Description: The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji This haunting novel of corruption and regret brings to life the complexity and turbulence of Kenyan society in the last five decades. It is a powerful story of passionate betrayals and political violence, racial tension and the strictures of tradition, told in elegant, assured prose. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Vikram Lall comes of age in 1950s Kenya, at the same time that the colony is struggling towards independence. Against the unsettling backdrop of Mau Mau violence, Vic and his sister Deepa, the grandchildren of an Indian railroad worker, search for their place in a world sharply divided between Kenyans and the British. We follow Vic from a changing Africa in the fifties, to the hope of the sixties, and through the corruption and fear of the seventies and eighties. Hauntingly told in the voice of the now exiled Vic, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is an acute and bittersweet novel of identity and family, of lost love and abiding friendship, and of the insidious legacy of the British Empire. Flap Double Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanjis The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" is a haunting novel of corruption and regret that brings to life the complexity and turbulence of Kenyan society in the last five decades. Rich in sensuous detail and historical insight, this is a powerful story of passionate betrayals and political violence, racial tension and the strictures of tradition, told in elegant, assured prose. The novel begins in 1953, with eight-year-old Vikram Lall a witness to the celebrations around the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, just as the Mau Mau guerilla war for independence from Britain begins to gain strength. In a land torn apart by idealism, doubt, political upheaval and terrible acts of violence, Vic and his sister Deepa must find their place among a new generation. Neither colonists nor African, neither white nor black, the Indian brother and sister find themselves somewhere in between in their band of playmates: Bill and Annie, British children, and Njoroge, an African boy. These are the relationships that will shape the rest of their lives. We follow Vikram through the changes in East African society, the immense promise of the fifties and sixties. But when that hope is betrayed by the corruption and violence of the following decades, Vic is drawn into the Kenyatta governments orbit of graft and power-broking. Njoroge, his childhood friend, can abandon neither the idealism of his youth nor his love for Vics sister Deepa. But neither the idealism of the one nor the passive cynicism of the other can avert the tragedies that await them. In interviews given when the novel was published, Vassanji commented that The In-Between World of Vikram Lall isthe first of his books to deal with his memories of Kenya, where he spent the first 5 years of his life: "I remember these images of fear, of terror. And I thought I had to come back to that and see the whole Mau Mau episode from the Asian point of view. I had never written a book set in Kenya, where my father was from. And when I did, I just felt good about it, because I was going back to one part, one of many homes." The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, a compelling record in the voice of a character described as "a cheat of monstrous and reptilian cunning," took three years to write. After research in Kenya and Britain, M.G. Vassanji devoted himself to the novel in a dark office at the University of Toronto. It was a hard process of creation and discovery, especially as Vassanji is an assiduous editor of his own work: "I come back to it over and over. For me, its like working on a sculpture. You sort of chip away a bit at a time until you tell yourself its as perfect as you can make it." Vassanjis fifth novel met with immense Canadian and international success. As well as making him the first author to win the Giller Prize twice, the book was a #1 national bestseller. " The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" is a profound and careful examination of one mans search for his place in the world; it also takes up themes that have run through Vassanjis work, such as the nature of community in a volatile society, the relations between colony and colonizer, and the inescapable presence of the past. It is also, finally, a deeply personal book: "The major thing that stands out in the book is people who are in-between. The feeling of belonging and not belonging is very centralto the book. And that also played out in my life. When we lived in Tanzania we belonged and did not belong because we had come from Kenya. That has been a major thread in my life." "From the Hardcover edition. Author Biography M.G. Vassanji was born in Kenya, and raised in Tanzania. He took a doctorate in physics at M.I.T. and came to Canada in 1978. While working as a research associate and lecturer at the University of Toronto in the 1980s he began to dedicate himself seriously to a longstanding passion: writing.His first novel, The Gunny Sack, won a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize, and he was invited to be writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa. The novels success was a spur, Vassanji has commented: "It was translated into several languages. I was confident that this was what I could do, that writing was not just wishful thinking. In 1989 I quit my full-time job and began researching The Book of Secrets." That celebrated, bestselling novel won the inaugural Giller Prize, in 1994.Vassanjis other books include the acclaimed novels No New Land (1991) and Amriika (1999), and Uhuru Street (1991), a collection of stories. His unique place in Canadian literature comes from his elegant, classical style, his narrative reach, and his interest in characters trying to reconcile different worlds within themselves. The subtle relations of the past and present are also constants in his writing: "When someone asks you where you are from or who you are, there is a whole resume of who you are. I know very few people who do not have a past to explain. That awareness is part of my work."M.G. Vassanji was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize in 1994 in recognition of his achievement in and contribution to the world of letters, and was in the same year chosen as one of twelve Canadians on Macleans Honour Roll. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons. Review "Gorgeous and heart-rending. . . . Vassanji explores [love and loss] with all the tact of a true literary power." --Chicago Tribune"Brilliantly written and deeply felt, it is a resonant family novel that is also a brutally honest portrayal of the last half century of tumultuous Kenyan history. . . . Vassanji displays his great gifts; this beautiful novel, which unfolds with intimacy and an inexorable sense of destiny, is proof that fictional truth can illuminate an epoch in history like nothing else."–The Boston Globe"Tautly written. . . . Admirably captures the tenor of the postcolonial period: the predicament of the Asian minority, the corruption that marred Kenyas fledgling independence, and the individual tragedies that were the cost of the revolution."–The New Yorker"A novel of elegant gesture, complex understanding, bright passion, and historical pain."–O, The Oprah Magazine"Finely drawn . . . an ambitious and enthralling work."–The Times Literary Supplement Long Description Vikram Lall comes of age in 1950s Kenya, at the same time that the colony is struggling towards independence. Against the unsettling backdrop of Mau Mau violence, Vic and his sister Deepa, the grandchildren of an Indian railroad worker, search for their place in a world sharply divided between Kenyans and the British. We follow Vic from a changing Africa in the fifties, to the hope of the sixties, and through the corruption and fear of the seventies and eighties. Hauntingly told in the voice of the now exiled Vic, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is an acute and bittersweet novel of identity and family, of lost love and abiding friendship, and of the insidious legacy of the British Empire. Review Quote "Gorgeous and heart-rending. . . . Vassanji explores [love and loss] with all the tact of a true literary power." --Chicago Tribune "Brilliantly written and deeply felt, it is a resonant family novel that is also a brutally honest portrayal of the last half century of tumultuous Kenyan history. . . . Vassanji displays his great gifts; this beautiful novel, which unfolds with intimacy and an inexorable sense of destiny, is proof that fictional truth can illuminate an epoch in history like nothing else."The Boston Globe "Tautly written. . . . Admirably captures the tenor of the postcolonial period: the predicament of the Asian minority, the corruption that marred Kenyas fledgling independence, and the individual tragedies that were the cost of the revolution." The New Yorker "A novel of elegant gesture, complex understanding, bright passion, and historical pain."O, The Oprah Magazine "Finely drawn . . . an ambitious and enthralling work."The Times Literary Supplement Excerpt from Book "Who is the third who walks always beside you?" -- T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land "Neti, neti." (Not this, not that.) -- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad "Po pote niendapo anifuata." (Wherever I go he follows me.) -- Swahili riddle; answer: shadow My name is Vikram Lall. I have the distinction of having been numbered one of Africas most corrupt men, a cheat of monstrous and reptilian cunning. To me has been attributed the emptying of a large part of my troubled countrys treasury in recent years. I head my countrys List of Shame. These and other descriptions actually flatter my intelligence, if not my moral sensibility. But I do not intend here to defend myself or even seek redemption through confession; I simply crave to tell my story. In this clement retreat to which I have withdrawn myself, away from the torrid current temper of my country, I find myself with all the time and seclusion I may ever need for my purpose. I have even come upon a small revelation -- and as I proceed daily to recall and reflect, and lay out on the page, it is with an increasing conviction of its truth, that if more of us told our stories to each other, where I come from, we would be a far happier and less nervous people. I am quite an ordinary man, as you will discover, and moderate almost to a fault. How I came upon my career and my distinction is a surprise even to me. But my times were exceptional and they would leave no one unscathed. Part 1 -- The Year of Our Loves and Friendships One Njoroge who was also called William loved my sister Deepa; I was infatuated with another whose name I cannot utter yet, whose brother was another William; we called him Bill. We had all become playmates recently. It was 1953, the coronation year of our new monarch who looked upon us from afar, a cold England of pastel, watery shades, and I was eight years old. I call forth for you here my beginning, the world of my childhood, in that fateful year of our friendships. It was a world of innocence and play, under a guileless constant sun; as well, of barbarous cruelty and terror lurking in darkest night; a colonial world of repressive, undignified subjecthood, as also of seductive order and security -- so that long afterwards we would be tempted to wonder if we did not hurry forth too fast straight into the morass that is now our malformed freedom. Imagine an outdoor mall, the type we still call a shopping centre there, a plain stubby strip of shops on open land, with unpaved parking in front. It was accessible from a side road that left the highway, less than a mile away, at the railway station. Far out in the distance, the farthest that you could see through the haze over the flat yellow plains, rose the steep green slopes of the great Rift Valley, down which both the railway and the highway descended to reach us at the floor. Behind us lay most of the rest of Nakuru, the principal town of our province. My family ran a provision store at this Valley Shopping Centre, which was ten minutes walk from the Asian development where we lived. We sold Ovaltine and Milo and Waterburys Compound and Horlicks -- how they roll past memorys roadblocks, these trademarks of a childhood -- and macaroni and marmalade, cheeses and olives, and other such items that the Europeans and the rich Indians who emulated them were used to. Beside us was a small bakery-caf Details ISBN1400076560 Author M.G. Vassanji Short Title IN BETWEEN WORLD OF VIKRAM LAL Language English ISBN-10 1400076560 ISBN-13 9781400076567 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 813.54 Year 2005 Residence US Series Vintage Contemporaries DOI 10.1604/9781400076567 Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2005-11-08 NZ Release Date 2005-11-08 US Release Date 2005-11-08 UK Release Date 2005-11-08 Pages 384 Publisher Random House USA Inc Publication Date 2005-11-08 Imprint Random House Inc Audience General We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:9954281;

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