Passage to India – Canadian writer Vassanji rediscovers his homeland

By NANCY SCHIEFER, SPECIAL TO SUN MEDIA

The experience of India is an overwhelming one, novelist M. G. Vassanji noted in a recent interview. There exists a widespread need to record one’s impressions of life, Vassanji pointed out, and he has done so in his latest book, A Place Within, a collection of journal entries winnowed and compiled into a single volume.

In deciding to write A Place Within, on the advice of his literary agent, Vassanji faced two problems. He did not want to publish what might be considered a banal screed celebrating the recognition of “roots,” nor did he wish to write a travel book. Instead, he wished his memoir to combine the personal with the historical, the present with the past, and to capture in print both the spiritual and the sordid dimensions of his ancestral homeland.

Complete at the source: Edmonton Sun
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