Author: M G Vassanji
Publisher: HarperCollins
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 309
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8172233930
Description
A novel of personal and political awakening, and of the eternal quest for home.
Amriika is a remarkable novel of personal and political awakening that spans three decades and explores the eternal quest for home. It is quintessentially North American novel, told from the point of view of a man from Dar es Salaam, East Africa.
In 1968, Ramji, a student, arrives in an America far different from the one he dreamed about, one caught up in anti-war demonstrations, revolutionary lifestyles, and spiritual quests. As he gradually grows apart from his community of foreign students, Ramji finds himself pulled by the tumultuous current of his times and swept into a world of changing values and sexual freedom, of peace marches, religious cults, and protest bombings. Much later, with his marriage faltering, and living a suburban life in a changed America, he meets a young woman from Zanzibar, and feels that a different, more authentic life is possible - until a mysterious visitor from Ramji's past arrives in their midst.
In this richly textured mosaic of lives and events, Vassanji depicts America during three highly charged decades in the nation's history. He has created a large and dynamic cast of characters, including Sona, an obsessive scholar and researcher of the past; Lucy-Anne Miller, a fiery radical of the 1960s, whose fanatical dedication to the causes of the day leaves Ramji with questions that will haunt him for a long time to come; Darcy, an infamous left-wing journalist and icon back home in Dar Es Salaam, who twice changes the course of Ramji's life; and the captivating Rumina, who holds the promise of a new beginning but may not be all that she seems.
Amriika confirms M G Vassanji's reputation as unique chronicler of our times.