The Book of Secrets: A Novel [Hardcover]

M. G. Vassanji (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1996

When retired schoolteacher Pius Fernandes discovers the 1913 diary of a British colonial administrator, he is drawn into a provocative account of the Asian community of East Africa and the liaisons, secrets, and feelings of its people. Winner of the Giller Prize.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Winner of Canada's esteemed Giller Prize, this complex novel is at once a story of the British Empire in Africa and a very postmodern meditation on the allures and pitfalls of narrative. It's set in the racial melting pot of East Africa, where African, Arab, Indian, English and German cultures mesh. The plot has two major strands: the present, in which an Indian-born retired history teacher, Pius Fernandes, discovers a diary written by Alfred Corbin, an English consul stationed in British East Africa (now Kenya) in 1913; and the past of the diary entries themselves, whose gaps and omissions Fernandes imaginatively fills with his own narrative. Corbin is posted to Kikono, a small town near Mt. Kilimanjaro, where he falls in love with his housekeeper, Mariamu, a young local woman betrothed to a bumbling shopkeeper. After the marriage, she bears a son, Ali, who has suspiciously light-colored skin and gray eyes. The second part of the novel follows "dashing" Ali's adventures as a successful salesman who moves to London with his young wife, Rita, who as a girl was a student of Fernandes's?and with whom he was in love. In the present day, Rita visits Fernandes in Africa and ultimately convinces him to give up his prying into the lives of "those who've lived a little more intensely than their neighbors." The book is lush with evocations of East African physical, cultural and historical landscapes. But energy is lost as Vassanji indulges in discursive tangents about the nature of history at the expense of sustained dramatic storytelling.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

After his initial examination of the "book of secrets," a fragment of a diary by a turn-of-the-century colonial official stationed in a remote outpost in British East Africa, the narrator, Pius Fernandes, soon loses his scientific objectivity as he finds himself continuing the story that this diary begins. In the prolog, he writes: "Because it has no end, this book, it ingests us and carries us with it, and so it grows." The diary has a life of its own, creating or rewriting history as the vagaries of its contents raise unanswerable questions for its readers that then shape the future direction of their lives. Fernandes finds himself reexamining his own life as an immigrant, comparing his own experiences with those of the colonial official, finding his own recent past connected to the more distant past represented in the diary, and reconsidering certain important relationships, the memories of which resurfaced because of his efforts to solve the diary's conundrums. The many layers of Vassanji's award-winning novel cannot be addressed here. A work of art, it well deserves Canada's GillerPrize, of which it is the first recipient. Highly recommended for all libraries without exception.?Rebecca Stuhr-Rommereim, Grinnell Coll. Libs., Ia.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 337 pages
• Publisher: Picador USA; First edition. edition (February 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312140835
• ISBN-13: 978-0312140830
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,690,808 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

M G Vassanji (www.mgvassanji.com) was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before going 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, The Gunny Sack, 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. The fact that he was never tenured he considers a blessing for it freed him to pursue his literary career. In 1996, Vassanji was made a fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla, where he visited again in 2010 as visiting professor.
If pressed, Vassanji considers himself African Asian Canadian; attempts to pigeonhole him along communal or other lines, however, he considers narrow-minded and malicious.

His work has appeared in various countries and several languages. He is winner of the Giller Prize (1994, 2003) for best novel in Canada; the Governor General's Prize (2009) for best work of nonfiction; the Harbourfront Festival Prize; the Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa, 1990); and the Bressani Prize. The Assassin's Song was also shortlisted for India's Crossword Prize. He is a member of the Order of Canada.
He lives in Toronto, and visits East Africa and India often.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Haunting tale of a marginal community as an empire fades., November 24, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Book of Secrets: A Novel (Paperback)

M.G. Vassanji's new novel, The Book of Secrets, is a haunting story -- at once a detective tale, a historical story, and a family saga. Its beauty lies in its ambiguities -- the way it leaves those loose ends in the novel: whose son was Noormohamed Pipa, arguably the protagonist? Whose son was Ali Akbar Ali, Pipa's, or the British administrator's? Did Ali Akbar Ali at all play some role in the Falkland crisis with his Argentine wife (there's a teaser about it, somewhere towards the end)? By leaving these strands ambiguous -- like the administrator Corbin and the child of nature, Mariamu (Did they or didn't they?) or the nature of relationship between Pius Fernandes, the narrator, and the poet (Gregory) he makes us speculate more. Had he solved all puzzles into a neat ending it would have satisfied one's curiosity, but perhaps drained the book of its haunting beauty. It is its incompleteness, its ambiguity, and its inadequacy, which makes it more accessible and perfect. The pace is gentle and the manner in which new characters were introduced was unhurried. In the hands of a less-skilled writer the tendency of crowding a historical plot with many characters can go haywire. And The Book Of Secrets offers that possibility: a tale told over nearly century, a waning empire, a colonized culture with a marginal population itself fleeing from poverty from its ancient motherland, conflict of great powers, world wars, independence struggle, and later, the disillusionment with Soviet-style planned economy ruining the rags-to-riches lives of unlettered migrants -- the canvas is vast, and the scope to be clever and populating it with a cast of thousands enormous. But Vassanji wisely takes his time in introducing people and lets a series of coincidences link them. And, as the tale unfolds, leaves some parts unanswered and vague. The book opens a new world as watched by a marginal player, the Indian, in a bigger landscape, Africa. While the Indian-African encounter is not mentioned in much detail, and that is possibly a failing of the book, the complicated maneuvers put in place by the Shamsi community to take away the fair-skinned Aku from Khanoum, the Swahili mother, reveals Indian color-consciousness. Jamali's grandson's dislike of his father singing a Gujarati hymn, is another evidence. I liked the peripheral way in which historical figures were introduced in the novel -- Livingstone and Mwalimu, or Julius Nyerere. It is so easy for such powerful personalities to force the pace of the story and take it in another direction altogether by the sheer weight of their presence and the history surrounding them. Vassanji succeeds in keeping the story focused on this marginal family, which had brief encounters with historical figures, and whose lives were influenced and transformed by those figures (Livingstone saves Pipa from possible amputation by German police; Mwalimu seeks political donations from Pipa and rewards him with a prized seat at Independence, only to dispense with him when the bigger cause, socialism, so demands.) There are a couple of excellent images: about the kind of currency notes handed down by the Germans (crisp) versus the kind of notes Pipa is used to handling -- smelling of sweat, crumpled, brought from bosoms or arm-pits, or smelling of matchboxes/tobacco. Or the long list of events in East Africa (pg 226 in the paperback) culminating in the end of an age. Vassanji has made that ambience real and palpable. There are other credible characters - the bespectacled Hindu accountant whose under-shirt is hanging out when he is apprehended with the Shamsi girl, or the hapless messenger,Karim Langdo. However, deeper exploration of the Indian-African experience would have made the novel richer. There is a small inaccuracy: Ali Akbar Ali and Rita carry on romance by exchanging notes through Karim Langdo. One of the film songs Ali Akbar Ali uses to woo Rita is: "The alley which doesn't have your home, I can't bear to tread upon." The time is 1940s, or a best, early 1950s. However, the song alluded to, clearly seems to be Mukesh's song from "Kati Patang" - "Jis gali mein tera ghar na ho balama, us gali se hame to guzarna naheen". Kati Patang, which catapulted Rajesh Khanna to stardom in India, was made in 1970 or 1971. Not that it matters, of course; the song *is* appropriate in the context, and this is not a quibble either. Could it be seen as Vassanji doffing his hat to Rushdie, about suspect narrators and tricks memory plays?? Finally, a word about Corbin's stay in Kikono, the fictional town. I couldn't help comparing the self-important air of a young warrior of the Raj, Corbin, as an ADC in a godforsaken town, with the cynical stint of Agastya Sen in "English, August: An Indian Story". But that's another story by itself. - Salil Tripathi

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Other Side of Africa, January 19, 2002

By 

lvkleydorff - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Secrets: A Novel (Paperback)

The author managed to write a novel that reads like a diary, a fascinating history oh Kenya and Tanzania from 1912 until 1988. He starts with Alfred Corbin who represents the British empire as ADC in a tiny Kenian town near the border to Tanganyika. The town had been founded by immigrants from India, who had come to East Africa in the second half of the 19th century. They became traders and, over the generations, some of them prospered. They lived through two world wars, married within their community, lived within their faith - and did not mix with the indigenous population. When independence came in the 1960s, they were destroyed by the new native powers.

Thus the author gives us the history of the Indian settlements, practically from their beginning to their aslmost destruction. His main characters shift from Corbin, to the Indian shopkeeper Pipa and his family, to the expatriate Englishman Gregory, destroyed by the new nation. There is hardly a mention of the native Africans.

Vassanji gives us a fascinating history of the people that Kenya, to this day, neglects and despises. I am very glad that this book was written to resurrect the Indian immigrant, whose trading really built these nations commercially.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Splendid, a gripping page turner. Read it., July 16, 1998

By 

Rose M. Chopitea "chopi" (Peru) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Book of Secrets: A Novel (Paperback)

It is not only my facination with Africa that made this book special. Vassanji really makes his characters come out of the book, inprints them in your head so they become so real you end up imagining they are your own personal friends. Haven't read a book I enjoyed so much in a long long time. when it came to an end, I wanted more. I really recomend this book to everyone, whatever their reading interest may be. This book will not dissapoint them.