The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

Sweeping in scope, both historically and geographically, Vassanji weaves a rich tapestry of vivid characters (real and imagined) in a Kenya poised between colonialism and independence. Vikram Lall, like his adopted country, inhabits an ‘in-between world’: between the pull of his ancestral home in India and the Kenya he loves passionately; between his tragic past in Africa and an unclear future in Canada; between escape from political terror and a seemingly inevitable return home …a return that may cost him dearly. A master storyteller, Vassanji intertwines the political and the personal – the rise of the Mau Mau in the last days of colonialism looms large over a plot centring on two love stories and a deep friendship. The result is a sumptuous novel that brilliantly explores the tyranny of history and memory, and questions the individual’s role and responsibility in lawless times.

Reviews of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

* One of the most impressive things about this fine novel is that it gives voice to a people some of whose forebears were in Africa before the Portuguese. It must be one of the most faithful accounts ever written about growing up through the cruel days of a guerrilla war in Africa. — Christopher Hope Daily Telegraph * This is a fine and memorable novel that will remind us that a good family saga, complete with romance and arranged marriages, can also place before us subtle moral issues, as well as portray all the drama and agony of an Empire's dissolution, and the birth and shattering of dreams. — Alexander McCall Smith The Times * A wholly engaging and spirited novel of Africa: warm, shrewdly charming, replete with its own wry and humane wisdom. — William Boyd * The true strength of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall lies in its storytelling. What perhaps is also M G Vassanji's triumph is that in choosing Africa and this particular period of history, he demonstrates that racism, prejudice and bigotry do not belong to one group along but are party of the human condition, going hand in hand with fear, suspicion and intolerance. — Natasha Mann Scotland on Sunday