Monday, September 24 @ 7:30pm
Robert Gill Theatre (214 College St., 3rd floor)
FREE

Two-time Giller-winning author M. G. Vassanji, author of When She Was Queen (stories), The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, Amriika, The Book of Secrets, No New Land, Uhuru Street (stories), and The Gunny Sack, joins the Reading Series for an evening of discussion about his magnificent new novel, The Assassin’s Song.

The Assassin’s Song opens in the 1960s in a village in Western India, the site of the thirteenth-century Sufi shrine of Pirbaag. Karsan Dargawalla is next in line after his father to assume the lordship of the shrine. But Karsan longs to be “just ordinary”–to be a great cricketer and play for his country and, at the urging of a truck driver, to learn more and more about the world. In secret he applies to go to Harvard, and when he is accepted, he can’t resist the opportunity–though this means profound disappointment for his father and heartbreak for his mother. Soon the intellectual excitement and discoveries of his new life compel him to abdicate his succession to the throne. But even as he succeeds in his “ordinary life” – becoming a professor, marrying and having a son, leading a charmed suburban existence in British Columbia – his heritage continues to haunt him. Finally when a personal tragedy strikes in Canada, and Pirbaag is devastated by communal violence, he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.

A story of grand historical sweep and intricate personal drama, a stunning evocation of the physical and emotional landscape of a man caught between filial obligation and personal yearning, between the ancient and the modern – The Assassin’s Song is a luminous novel.

M G Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to Canada in 1978, he attended MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in theoretical nuclear physics. From 1978-1980 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Atomic Energy of Canada, and from 1980 to 1989 he was a research associate at the University of Toronto. During this period he developed a keen interest in medieval Indian literature and history, co-founded and edited a literary magazine (The Toronto South Asian Review, later renamed The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad), and began writing stories and a novel. In 1989, with the publication of his first novel, he was invited to spend a season at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. That year ended his active career in nuclear physics. His contributions there he considers modest, in algebraic models and high spin states.

His wife, Nurjehan, was born in Tanzania. They have two sons, Anil, and Kabir. He lives in Toronto, and visits Africa and India often.

Awards: Giller Prize, twice; Harbourfront Festival Prize; Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa); Bressani Prize. Order of Canada.