J. Roger Kurtz – State University of New York, Brockport: To the growing list of East African literature focusing on the heritage of that region’s Asian population we may now add the title Bead Bai, a historical novel about the Ismaili community in Kenya during the first part of the twentieth century see WLT, July 2012, 14–18. This is the first novel published by Sultan Somjee, whose career as an anthropologist began in Kenya and continues in his present home in western Canada.
Readers familiar with the novels of M. G. Vassanji author of The Gunny Sack, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall [see WLT, Sept. 2005, 84], and other titles will find themselves on familiar terrain with this novel.
Ismailimail 