The Magic of Saida by M. G. Vassanji

Abstract

Ma Yuan Ballad of the Himalayas: Stories of Tibet Herbert J. Batt, tr. MerwinAsia Traveling through Tibet, a narrator questions meaning and “story,” nodding to Tibetan Buddhism’s idea of cosmos as illusion. From a tongue-in-cheek allegory of China and Tibet to the playful account of a young Tibetan in the throes of love, Ma Yuan breaks with tradition and helps move Chinese literature into the twenty-first century. march–april 2013 • 147 Frances Hatfield Rudiments of Flight Wings Press Hatfield’s first book of poems “speaks in an alphabet of light and motion,” sending the reader through layers of the self only to resurface in deserts filled with color. Rudiments of Flight is elegiac and celebratory, dauntless in its exploration of both the “soul’s geometry” and the metaphysics of everyday minutiae. Nota Bene gophers—they’re all cynical and evil.” Moreover, having no experience with or liking for her putative audience, Jerne fills her stories with words like “louchely” and “fecund” and sentences like “The fox was orally fixated all afternoon.” Interesting though Jerne’s story is, it’s her voice—misogynistic, wry, astute, and unfailingly deadpan— that keeps us rapidly turning pages even as we savor every sentence. Her status, initially an outsider to both human and vampire communities, is the perfect vantage point for caustic insights into Hungarian society, gender politics, the airs of artists, literary forms ranging from lyric poetry to romance novels, the aspirations of writers, and the genre, which this novel both enriches and subverts. As well wrought as works by Jerne’s idols Hans Christian Andersen , Oscar Wilde, and Lewis Carroll, The Finno-Ugrian Vampire belongs at the top of your “must-read” list. For as Jerne reminds us, “vampirism, just like literature, is not something to be denied.” Michael A. Morrison University of Oklahoma M. G. Vassanji. The Magic of Saida. Toronto. Doubleday Canada. 2012. isbn 9780385667142 The Magic of Saida, set in India, East Africa, and Canada, is the latest novel by the prolific African Asian Canadian author M. G. Vassanji. Readers familiar with his six novels, two collections of short stories, and two books of nonfiction will recognize the contours of his tale of colonial history, racial hybridity, migration, love, longing, and guilt (see WLT, Sept. 2005, 84). But this novel also extends our understanding of German colonial history in Africa as well as the underrepresented stories of Africans in India and the valuable contributions of Indians to African history. Kamal Punja, the protagonist, is a physician in Edmonton, Canada, whose ancestors traveled from India to East Africa in the late nineteenth century. His history is intriguing. Kamal was born on Kilwa, a small island on the south coast of Tanzania . He is a “chotaro”—a Swahili term for a mixed-blood—an offspring of an Indian father and an African mother. Kamal’s father abandoned his mother to go back to India when Kamal was a little boy. At the age of eleven, one of Kamal’s paternal uncles pays Kamal’s mother to adopt him, and eventually raises him as part of his Indian community in Africa, cut off from his African heritage. When forced to leave his birthmother, Kamal also leaves behind his childhood love, Saida—the African granddaughter of local poet Mzee Omari bin Tamim, a man with a complex relationship to the German colonizers. As the story unfolds, Kamal goes off to university in neighboring Uganda, but history intervenes as Idi Amin comes to power, and Kamal and his friend Shamim—who eventually becomes his wife—immigrate to Canada. Thirty-five years later, Kamal, now a successful doctor and father of two children, is haunted by memories of his early childhood. He is drawn back to Kilwa by his magical bond and love for Saida, and the unresolved questions about why his mother relinquished him. In his return to his origins, Kamal’s personal history unfolds in 148 World Literature Today reviews the context of other histories, including the ugly legacy of colonization, slavery, and personal deceits. Vassanji ’s prodigious research provides insight into certain details of the German occupation of East Africa, the Maji Maji rebellion in Tanzania (War of the...