Description

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     Nurdin Lalani and his family, Asian immigrants from Africa, have come to the Toronto suburb of Don Mills only to find that the old world and its values pursue them. A genial orderly at a downtown hospital, he has been accused of sexually assaulting a girl. Although he is innocent, traditional propriety prompts him to question the purity of his own thoughts. Ultimately, his friendship with the enlightened Sushila offers him an alluring freedom from a past that haunts him, a marriage that has become routine, and from the trials of coping with teenage children. Introducing us to a cast of vividly drawn characters within this immigrant community, Vassanji is a keen observer of lives caught between one world and another.

About the Author

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M.G. VASSANJI won the Giller Prize for The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, and the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction for A Place Within: Rediscovering India. His novel The Assassin's Song was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction. Most recently, his novel Nostalgia was a finalist in Canada Reads 2017.

Praise For…

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"A novel of considerable charm and intelligence, informed by a delightful sense of irony." —Mordecai Richler

"Vassanji probes beneath the surface to create a compelling and poignant portrait of human displacement." —Ottawa Citizen

"It is part of Vassanji's great talent to demonstrate that the minor changes—unexpected love, sex, accusations—in the life of a very modest man are, in fact, transformations of history." —Globe and Mail

"Vassanji, in charting a tiny part of the Canadian reality, offers up certain truths, thought-provoking, disturbing, but ultimately, and in a small way, hopeful." —Saturday Night