AMRIIKA

This earnest and intelligent novel, the fourth from the Indian-born author (now resident in Canada) of The Book of Secrets (1996), sedulously charts an Asian-African immigrant’s experience of three decades of recent American history. Arriving in the US from East Africa (Dar es Salaam) in 1968, Ramji is drawn into campus radicalism, the orbits of several charismatic men and otherwise fascinating women, and eventually contented marriage and fatherhood—until a chance meeting many years later with a vibrant younger woman (from Zanzibar) reawakens passions he thought he had put aside. It’s an overly familiar story, further hampered by the fact that several of the vividly drawn secondary characters (especially Darcy, a wily African journalist and media celebrity) are so much more interesting than its pallid, and really quite generic protagonist.

Vassanji is a gifted writer who has produced and will again produce better work.