Vassanji, M. G. (1950-…), is a Kenyan-born Canadian writer of South Asian descent. Much of his fiction concerns the experience of the South Asians who lived in East Africa when it was under European colonial rule, but who have since been forced to move to other countries, often ending up in Canada. This series of displacements opens the way for an examination of conflicts between old and new ways of life, and between individuals and the communities in which they live. Vassanji won the Giller Prize, one of Canada’s leading literary awards, for his novels The Book of Secrets (1994) and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003). His other novels include The Gunny Sack (1989), No New Land (1991), Amriika (2000), and The Assassin’s Song (2007). His short stories have been collected in Uhuru Street (1992) and When She Was Queen (2005). Massanji also wrote a nonfiction descriptive and historical account of India, A Place Within (2008).
Moyez G. Vassanji was born on May 30, 1950, in Nairobi, Kenya, and grew up there and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He then moved to the United States in 1970 for his university education, gaining a Bachelor of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974 and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978. In 1978, he moved to Canada to work at a nuclear power plant. He then served as a lecturer and researcher in physics at the University of Toronto from 1980 until 1989, when he became a full-time writer.
