The Assassin's Song

In the aftermath of the brutal violence that gripped western India in 2002, Karsan Dargawalla, heir to Pirbaag – the shrine of a mysterious, medieval sufi – begins to tell the story of his family. His tale opens in the 1960s: young Karsan is next in line after his father to assume lordship of the shrine, but he longs to be “just ordinary.” Despite his father's pleas, Karsan leaves home behind for Harvard, and, eventually, marriage and a career. Not until tragedy strikes, both in Karsan's adopted home in Canada and in Pirbaag, is he drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India. Editorial Reviews …thought-provoking and satisfying…There are echoes of Rohinton Mistry in Vassanji's lampooning of post-independent India's frenetic nationalism, of V.S. Naipaul in the insistence that solutions can arrive only from a thorough understanding of the past, of Salman Rushdie in the disclosure of a history composed of personal narratives and myths. But the quiet lyricism of Karsan's contemplations, the careful evocation of place, the writer's obvious warmth for his characters, the sense of compassion layered into the story—these are all Vassanji's. Vassanji is first and foremost a storyteller. There are no passages of poetic flourishes, and a reader might pause here and there, not to admire the language but to absorb a simple truth, simply stated. The book is filled with instances of these, from the start, when Karsan reflects on the elusive nature of his heritage, to the end, when he begins to decipher the random sequence of events and poses the question: "Do we always end up where we really belong?

Author: M G Vassanji

Publisher: Canongate

Released Date: 2009

ISBN: 9781847672834