And Home Was Kariakoo

Posted on 16 September 2017 by M.G. Vassanji

From M.G Vassanji, two time Giller Prize winner and a GG winner for nonfiction, 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. Best Download [ And Home Was Kariakoo ] author [ M.G. Vassanji ] – kino-fada.fr There s a scene in Americanah in which the main character, Ifemelu, is getting her hair braided in a US set African hairdresser s, and a white woman comes in, looking for the Bo Derek As this Kelsey natters on about her love for all things African, she mentions that reading A Bend in the River really opened her eyes to life in modern Africa Ifemelu snorts and explains that that book, written from the perspective of an Indian born in Africa, couldn t possibly explain the real Africa as it was There s a scene in Americanah in which the main character, Ifemelu, is getting her hair braided in a US set African hairdresser s, and a white woman comes in, looking for the Bo Derek As this Kelsey natters on about her love for all things African, she mentions that reading A Bend in the...I received an ARC from GR in exchange for an honest review At the beginning of his book, Mr Vassanji, an author I ve not heard of before, wrote how us, outsiders, see Africa Most of us see it as a land of war, disease, and hunger, a sick entity deserving pity and sustenance and all help possible Personally, I also saw it as a wild land, full of dangerous animals ranging from lions to poisonous snakes What makes this primitiveness, this forbidding solitude of the jungle so wrenchingly I received an ARC from GR in exchange for an honest review At the beginning of his book, Mr Vassanji, an author I ve not heard of before, wrote how us, outsiders, see Africa Most of us see it as a land of war, disease, and hunger, a sick entity deserving pity and sustenance and all help possible Personally, I also saw it as a wild land, full of dangerous animals ranging from lions to poisonous snakes What makes this primitiveness, this forbidding solitude of the jungle so wrenchingly attractive from a distance There is in this stillness a certain spirituality, a welcome loneliness that I ve often treasured in my travels, in which there seems to be only the universe and I an endless moment devoid of fear or death It made me remember that once I dream...In all my reading of Africa, I have read very little if any by or about Asian people This certainly helped start the filling of that void It s an interesting book part memoir reflection, part travelogue and part history Although I enjoyed learning the bits about German colonialism, since we usually hear about the British, the book s greatest value for me definitely was its ability to...A version of this review first appeared on my blog.Another publisher says no quotes from the book please review.I remember when I learned that there had been Indian immigration to East Africa I can remember it precisely because I had gone to a book fair with my mother, held at the Nepean Sportsplex on the Saturday of Canadian Thanksgiving in 2000 I was working at Royal SunAlliance Insurance Company of Canada in Toronto and had taken the Greyhound home for the weekend So we we...Vassanji has always been fascinated by what he calls in between lives It s not just what I write, he says, it s what I am It s the modern condition you could be from Newfoundland and now live in Toronto, as Vassanji does But Africa is a special case, he adds, partly because the in between ness of Asian Africans like him stretches over three continents, and partly because I feel very strongly the wo...I had enjoyed this book and learned many new things about they area, however may have been better if I had traveled there On the list of places to goThe only Canadian novelist to have won the Giller Prize twice for The Book of Secret in 1994 and The in Between World of Vikram Lall in 2003 is none other M G Vassanji He also won the Governor General s Literary Award for Non Fiction for A Place Within 2009 Such recognition is warranted, for Vassanji...I received this book as a Goodreads First Read It started a little slow for me, as it had lots of long sections of historical information, but as the book progressed, a beautiful picture began to emerge of a part of the world seldom seen in the light in which this author presents it Vassanji weaves detailed history with personal experiences, memories, and musings about his homeland As an Asian native to East Afric...I received an Advance copy of this book from Goodreads.Travel journals are not usually my first choice of reading material I chose And Home was Kariakoo by M.G Vassanji because I wanted to get behind the usual headlines and sound bites about Africa and see it from a home grown perspective Because M.G is an African of East Indian descent now living in Canada, he gives it an interesting perspective.The book has some interesting glimpses of life in Africa for a minority group The author s in I received an Advance copy of this book from Goodreads.Travel journals are not usually my first choice of reading material I chose And Home was Kariakoo by M.G Vassanji because I wanted to get behind the usual headlines and sound bites about Africa and see it from a home grown perspec...This book was a Goodreads win I was very excited to win this book and wasn t disappointed It was interesting reading about Asian Africans, a group that I haven t ever heard much about And Home Was Kariakoo is a little of everything a memoir of Vassanji s life as a child in Tanzania, a travelogue of his journey to find out what the Asian African culture is like now also in Tanzania , and some distant history relating the journeys of Livingstone, Stanley and Richard Burton as they trave...

English
16 September 2017

M.G. Vassanji