And Home Was Kariakoo: A Memoir of East Africa [Paperback]

From M.G. Vassanji, two-time Giller Prize winner and a GG winner for Non-fiction, comes a poignant love letter to his birthplace and homeland, East Africa--a powerful and surprising portrait that only an insider could write.

     Part travelogue, part memoir, and part history-rarely-told, here is a powerful and timely portrait of a constantly evolving land. From a description of Zanzibar and its evolution to a visit to a slave-market town at Lake Tanganyika; from an encounter with a witchdoctor in an old coastal village to memories of his own childhood in the streets of Dar es Salaam and the suburbs of Nairobi, Vassanji combines brilliant prose, thoughtful and candid observation, and a lifetime of revisiting and reassessing the continent that molded him--and, as we discover when we follow the journeys that became this book, shapes him still.

Compelling. . . .And Home Was Kariakoooffers an insider's experience of East Africa, empathetic and informed. . . . Vassanji contemplates in clean, unfussy prose. He probes connections between past and present--and isn't sentimental about either. --Maclean's

A memoir in the widest sense. There is no straightforward narrative or awakening; instead, the book is composed of memories and tied together with sharp historical perspective. How do the different parts of a person coalesce to create an identity? What does 'home' mean and what are our responsibilities to it? . . . ThroughoutAnd Home Was Kariakoo, Vassanji succeeds in understanding the tension of a bifurcated life and exposing the weight of belonging carried by immigrants like him. After six novels and a long, successful career, Vassanji's search from how he went to Nairobi to Toronto has come to a meaningful reckoning. --The Globe and Mail

M.G. VASSANJI is the author of six novels, two collections of short stories, and two works of nonfiction. His first novel,The Gunny Sack, lĂ!