The Magic of Saida - Softcover

Vassanji, M G

3.41

620 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385667159 ISBN 13: 9780385667159

Publisher: Anchor Canada, 2013

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"The Magic of Saida is the sort of novel that, upon finishing, one wants to immediately read again, to examine, to study just how Vasssanji works his narrative magic, and to allow oneself to savour it just that little bit longer." --The Globe and Mail

From Giller Prize-winner M. G. Vassanji comes the story of Kamal Punja, son of an African mother and an Indian father, who has been living in Canada for forty years. Despite his material wealth, Kamal finds himself longing for the place of his birth--Africa--and of a girl there he once loved. As a child he was certain that Saida--granddaughter of a great Swahili poet and his constant companion--would become his future wife, but when he was just eleven Kamal's mother sent him to live with his estranged father's family in India. Now, decades later, Kamal journeys back to the village he left--to confront his long-unresolved racial identity and the nightmarish legacy of a broken promise.

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Review:

"Gripping. . . . Compelling. . . . A humble village, in the imagination of this chronicler, becomes a vortex of varying belief systems and ways of life."
--National Post

"A sensitive examination of love, loss, and homelessness resulting from necessary shifts in cultural environments."
--The Vancouver Sun

About the Author:

M.G. VASSANJI is the author of eight previous novels, two collections of short stories and three works of nonfiction. His first novel, The Gunny Sack, was the winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. He has won the Giller Prize for both The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, and the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction for A Place Within: Rediscovering India. His novel The Assassin's Song was shortlisted for both the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Most recently, Nostalgia was selected as a finalist in Canada Reads 2017. He was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania, and attended university in the United States. He lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.

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