The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

Product ID: 14042

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Author: M G Vassanji
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 403
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670058041

Description

It is 1953 in colonial Kenya, and eight-year-old Vikram Lall witnesses the celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, even as the Mau Mau guerilla war challenges British rule. Vic and his sister Deepa, whose grandfather came to Kenya from Punjab to build the railways, must find their place in this uncertain world of violent upheaval, confusing loyalties and conflicting ideologies. And among their newly acquired playmates, the brother and sister, neither black nor White, find themselves in between British Bill and Annie, and the African Njoroge. These friendships will haunt them the rest of their lives.

We follow Vic from the changing Africa of the fifties; tot eh sixties-a time that holds immense promise. But when that hope is betrayed by the corruption, fear and repression of the seventies and eighties, Vic finds himself drawn into the official orbit of graft and power-brokering. Njoroge, on the other hand, can abandon neither the idealism of his youth nor his love for Deepa. Neither the cynicism of the one nor the idealism of the other can avert the tragedies that await.

Acute and bittersweet, vividly portrayed and finely nuanced, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is told in the voice of the exiled Vic from the shoes of Lake Ontario, as he contemplates the historical events that have shaped him-one of Africa’s most corrupt men-and the choices he has made.

My name is Vikram Lall. I have the distinction of having been numbered one of Africa’s most corrupt men, a cheat of monstrous and reptilian cunning. To me has been attributed the emptying of a large part of my troubled country’s treasury in recent years. I head my country’s List of shame. These and other descriptions actually flatter my intelligence, if not my moral sensibility. But I do not intend here to defend myself or even seek redemption through confession: I simply crave to tell my story, I am quite an ordinary man, as you will discover and moderate almost to a fault. How I came upon my career and my distinction is a surprise even to me. But my times were exceptional and they would leave no one unscathed.

Acute and bittersweet, vividly portrayed and finely nuanced, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall is told in the voice of the exiled Vic from the shoes of Lake Ontario, as he contemplates the historical events that have shaped him-one of Africa’s most corrupt men-and the choices he has made.

REVIEWS

It is part of Vassanji’s great talent to demonstrate that the minor changes-unexpected love, sex, accusations-in the life of a modest man are, in fact, transformations of history.
-The Globe and Mail

Vassanji is one of our, finest storytellers.
-Quill and Quire

Vassanji, offers up certain truths, thought-provoking disturbing but ultimately, and in a small way, hopeful.
-Saturday Night

Vassanji captures both the minute ripples of individual human motivations and the broad sweep of the grim machine we call history.
-Ottawa Citizen