Vassanji made it straight into the literary limelight with the publication of The Gunny Sack in 1989. It landed with a big bang and his writing career was launched. It is not unfair to say that at the time, and for many years afterwards, the book was better received and appreciated in the diaspora and academic circles than in the East African Asian community`s own home ground, so to speak. This was before the internet age, when news of new titles did not spread to the discerning reader, let alone the wider public, with the ease and speed that it does now. But reach me it did and I still remember how excited I was when I read it in the first half of 1990.
I can trace this and what happened afterwards through my archival records. The Gunny Sack had made such a profound impression on me that I seriously toyed with the idea of getting in touch with Vassanji via his publisher, but as a busy practitioner with all sorts of commitments at the time I kept on putting it off. Then quite by chance I met a close friend of his, a co-founder with him of the Toronto South Asian Review, at a legal convention in London sometime in September 1990. He, Iqbal Dewji, offered to pass my letter on to Vassanji and so I hastened to put my thoughts on paper. Reading that now, nearly 24 years later, I am struck by my own intuitive understanding of the novel`s significance even in those early days, when I had not come across any critical references to the work. Here are some extracts from what I wrote on 10 October, 1990:
More at awaazmagazine.com – VASSANJI AND ME.
Also watch: Interview of MGV on Global TV, Oct 17, 2014
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