Customer Reviews

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

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This is one of the best books I've read this year. Memorable characters, a politically and emotionally-charged setting, and clean writing make Vikram Lall's in-between world a fascinating place to be.

When the novel opens, Vic Lall is in Canada, having fled his home in Kenya after being named the most corrupt man in the country. He is the grandson of a man who came from India to build the Kenyan railway, the son of a store owner in a small Kenyan town. He thinks back on the fun he had with his younger sister, Deepa, neighbor Njoroge, and Bill and Annie, two English children. It is the time of the Mau Mau rebellion when white families were being killed by rebels. It comes too close to their town, and the Lalls make a difficult move Nairobi.

By this time you are wondering how mild fellow like Vikram could possibly have it in him to be named the most corrupt man in an African nation. The story moves ahead to 1965 when former Mau Mau sympathizer Jomo Kenyata is now president of an independent Kenya. Njoroge is moving up in the government and Vic follows. Now the delicate dance of race and politics comes into play as Njoroge and Deepa begin to play out their childhood fascination with each other, and Vic learns that some things never change.

M.G. Vassanji won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize for this novel, and well he should have, even though he beat out Ann-Marie MacDonald whose "The Way the Crow Flies" was probably my favorite book last year. In "The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" he spins a rich, subtle, carefully layered tale which is also very hard to put down.

"The In-Between World of Vikram Lall" is an excellent novel of personal growth, while also being a fine social history (Indians in Kenya) and remarkable political history (Kenya). As political history it is a chilling account of how corruption in an African country destroys the promise of independence. It brings the face of corruption home to the reader as only fiction can. The protagonist, Vikram Lall, is a venal man who transcends time and place - one can picture him as an assistant at Enron. While focusing on Lall, the novel is rich in characters and relationships, and all the characters are nuanced and credible, including Kenyatta, the real world leader of Kenyan independence. In fact, it is in the novel's portrayal of Kenyatta, and Lall's fictional boss (at least I couldn't find him on the internet) that it is most chilling, though these people are not pathological murderers and sadists like Idi Amin of Uganda. The prose is not special, just very good, as Vassanji is equally capable with character, dialogue, natural setting. The plot is always interesting, and becomes something of a page turner at the end. The story of Lall's childhood, adolescence and young adulthood is as interesting as the rest. I feel Vassanji made an error in introducing gun running, it just was not necessary, but that is a small thing and my own opinion. This book is everything that "The Kite Runner" is not, despite the latter's much greater popularity

Growing up in Nakuru, Kenya, in the 1950s, Vikram Lall and his sister Deepa, the children of Indian merchants, become friends with British children Bill Bruce and his sister Annie, and with Njoroge, a Kikuyu who lives with his grandfather, the family's gardener. While Vic is secretly in love with Annie, Njoroge is secretly in love with Deepa, both childhood relationships ignoring the cultural and color barriers of the times. The Mau Mau, a Kikuyu group dedicated to ridding the country of the British, are on the march, attacking and killing British men, women, and children. To Lall and his friends, who live in an area where violence has not yet struck, however, they are almost mythic creatures, until the violence strikes close to home, and Vic's life and perceptions are altered forever.

Alternating points of view between the present, when Vikram Lall is in his fifties and living outside Toronto, Canada, where he is "numbered one of Africa's most corrupt men," and the early 1950s, when he lived in a diverse Kenyan community, Vassanji shows how the Lalls are doubly alienated, first from their family in India, whose village, thanks to the British Partition of India, is now part of Pakistan, and from the majority population of Kenya. His depiction of the Lall family, the Indian merchant community, and the African community's hostility towards British rule sets the scene for the action during the next forty years.

When Vic, as a young man living in the ultimately independent Kenya, works in the Ministry of Transport and moves up the political ladder, he is powerless to resist orders from his superiors, even though his job is to launder cash coming in as bribes. The story of Jomo Kenyatta and his successors, and the growing corruption which taints their governments--and Vic--becomes increasingly compelling as the stories of Vic, Deepa, and Njoroge continue to intersect and overlap.

Vassanji tells a fully developed saga that stimulates the reader's emotions at the same time that it reflects historical realities, and the plot is filled with the excitement of change along with its problems. Through intense and vividly rendered descriptions, he juxtaposes the natural world against the unnatural violence of the times. Strong love stories, told realistically, run parallel to the action and keep the reader involved on a level beyond that of history and theme, as the characters evolve in response to the changing times. Fascinating and involving on all levels, this novel, winner of Canada's Giller Prize, should win a broad new audience for M. G. Vassanji. Mary Whipple

Vananji has written a telling story of an Indian family trying to re-orient their lives during and after Kenya's independence from British colonial rule.The Lalls struggle as their position in Kenyan society changes from successful businessmen to unwanted immigrants, covert sympathizers with the European colonialists. Even though they manage to become rich and prosperous in independent Kenya, they pay a price for staying. The son Vic, from whose perspective the story is told, makes unethical career compromises that haunt him for life and make him an outcast in the country he loves. His sister Deepa never recovers from unfulfilled love for their chidhood friend Njoroge, a native Kikuyu Kenyan. Their relationship is forbidden in such turbulent political times. The parents marriage strains under the pressures of political and societal change, turning them from each other and towards substance addiction and religiosity respectively for comfort.
There is an uplifting tone to the story though, which overshadows the tragedy. It centers on an enduring friendship between Vic and Njoroge, and the innocent love between Deepa and Njoroge in the face of a disapproving family and society. This friendship and love both get expressed in Vic and Deepa's relationship with Noroge's son Joseph.
Excellent historical fiction of post-colonial Kenya from an Asian viewpoint. I've added Vansanji to my growing list of amazing Indian Canadian writers.

Without creating a spoiler it needs to be said that the ending of this complex, in many ways brilliant, novel is a disservice to its story and to its readers. Its illogic is not justified by artificed italics; it is narratively unethical, an author's rather self-indulgent whim, inserted, it would seem because he could not decide whether he actually despised his main character's in-betweeness. There are other ways that the story and the character could have been served without resorting to a device that leaves one at the end of 400 pages with a resounding, "Huh?"

This saga of an Indian family living in Kenya, told by `one of Africa's most corrupt men', sketches the (in)direct implication of its family members in Kenya's history.

The Mau Mau movement of Yomo Kenyatta is fighting against the brutal British occupants (`plucking out eyes with bayonets') in order to free Kenya of its colonial regime.
The Indians in that country constitute an in-between world: `we Asians were special: we were brown, we were few and frightened and we could be threatened with deportation as aliens even if we had been in the country before some African people.'
Some stay neutral, but other chose sides and are directly involved in the committed atrocities.
Vikram Lall's idyllic youth comes brutally to an end with the murder of a white family.

After the black victory, the freedom movement and the Mau Mau are betrayed. `That ours had become a country of ten millionaires and ten million paupers. Those who had collaborated with the colonial police were now in all the high posts and had taken the best land and opportunities. ...If you were connected, through family or communal allegiances, even penniless you were protected and favoured.'

Corruption, blackmail, extortion and intimidation become rampant in order to `buy' cheaply the businesses of `strangers.
Vikram Lall becomes a civil servant overseeing big business contracts ...

This book is also a hymn on green Africa with the all importance of rain and a reminder of India's caste (marriage) and religious problems: `Her soul has flown away, it's only the empty body. She'll come back in a new body. I rather preferred the old body. How would I recognize the new one?'

Vassanji's chronicle is an impressive achievement, but not a `feast' of a book; instead Vikram Lall's world is one of racism, fanaticism, brutal power struggle and blatant corruption.
Not to be missed.

This novel is presented in the first-person point of view, the narrator being Vikram Lall, an Indian born and raised in Kenya. We are made to understand that Vikram turns out to be a horrendously corrupt individual who bankrupts his nation. However, he begins by recounting his childhood, as a young boy in Nakuru, Kenya. Then we are carried into his young adulthood, as he begins to work for the newly independent government, entering the dark realm of underhanded politics. Throughout the novel, the author brings us back to Vikram's present location (Canada) where he is remembering his past.

My only complaint about this novel is in Vikram's character. A dark tragedy alters his emotions, rendering him to be a passionless man. But that lack of vigor makes him an absolute bore. There were a few scenes where I thought Vikram would suddenly break out of his shell, but he remains restrained throughout, allowing injustices to occur and his desires to collapse. I enjoyed the other characters though, especially Deepa and Njoroge, possibly the most passionate individuals in the novel.

I greatly appreciated the fearlessness in exhibiting race relations between Indians and everyone else in Kenya. The interplay appeared geniune, showing the social hierarchy amongst the races (the British, Indians, then blacks at the bottom). This hierarchy gets flipped after Kenya's independence, leaving the Indians in the middle again. But since the majority of Indians did not support the blacks during the freedom struggle, they become the scapegoats for the newly freed country's problems, leading to mass deportations, etc. Most of the race relations are viewed from Vikram's serene point of view.

I also appreciated the detailed characters, such as Mahesh Uncle who backs the Mau Mau in their fight against the British, and his relationship with Vikram.

Great book overall, excellent for those who want a greater understanding of the aftermath of colonialism.

I have lived in east Africa, and I have enjoyed this author before, so I read this. It is not as compelling as I had hoped, but it has a strength about it that makes it a good read.

Vassanji's narrative of the history and cultures in Kenya are extremely interesting. He depicts a very realistic portrait of life during those times. The only problem I had with this book was the slow beginning which was hard to read through. As the novel progresses, the reader witnesses the change within Vikram, the main character in this novel and his inability to come to terms with his loss of innocence as a young child. Those devestations that taunt him even as an adult underlay the reasons why he has become who he is in the later parts of the novel. Vikram's character is truly perplexing and worth the read of this award winning book.

Colored in a collage of cultural paints, M.G. Vassanji's writing style is so breathtaking that I sometimes found myself pausing with the book in hand to allow certain moments to linger. With influences from Canada, Kenya and India, the book enriches with its varied household vernacular and satisfies with a highly appealing narrative.

Though the book is fictional, particular descriptions are in a sense proverbial; accounts of the Mau Mau movement in residential areas, political corruption during and after Jomo Kenyatta's reign, images from pre-independence Kenya including Kikuyu's on the fertile highlands and Indian laborers brought in by the British to build the legendary railway from Mombasa to Uganda. We also witness the long exhausted battle between Indian parents and their children's inter-racial relationships.

Some of the imagery is very powerful and for some, it's naturally nostalgic. In fact, I could vividly imagine myself on that noisy steam train, on tracks built by mysterious ancestral hands, staring out at Mount Longonot and her golden province. It was so clear.

Vikram Lall, who flees to Canada to evade dangerous charges of corruption, dwells on the details of his childhood in a 1950's Nakuru, exposing the patriotism, racism and vice of the times. It's his personal account, sometimes highly emotional and other times numb. Perhaps that's what gives it its realness and charm - being candid and mysterious at the same time. Not to get too Freudian or anything, but we also see how incidents during his childhood and the details of his first loving relationships inevitably play in to who he becomes as an adult. It's a fantastic book and I especially recommend it to Kenyans (National, Indian, British and everyone), who will relate to the rich history and the manners of thought conveyed within its surprisingly easy-to-read pages.