Novel
The Book of Secrets
M. G. Vassanji · 1994
Synopsis
Dar es Salaam, 1988. Pius Fernandes, a retired teacher of Goan origin, receives from a former pupil an old diary found in the back room of a shop: that of Alfred Corbin, a British assistant district administrator who landed at Mombasa in 1913 and was posted to Kikono, a small town near Kilimanjaro. Fernandes sets out to reconstruct what these brief notes leave unsaid: the story of Mariamu, promised to the Indian shopkeeper Pipa, of the son she brings into the world, and of the rivalries born of the war between the English and German colonies.
Context
The novel appeared in 1994 from McClelland & Stewart, then in the United States from Picador in 1996. It interweaves the laconic notes of Corbin's diary and Fernandes's research; the title takes up the name the inhabitants gave to the administrator's notebook, kitabu cha siri zetu, the book of our secrets. The author returns in it to the Indo-African world from which he comes, between British East Africa and German East Africa.
Who it is for
A dense novel, with several voices and several periods; a few reference points on colonial East Africa and the First World War help the reader find their way.
Prizes and reception
Winner in 1994 of the very first Giller Prize for Canadian fiction, and published in the United States two years later.
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