We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,705,642.63 | Books Available: 749,197 | Members Online: 125

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Gunny Sack

The Gunny Sack
Author: M.G. Vassanji

Memory, Ji Bai would say, is this old sack here, this poor dear that nobody has any use for any more. — — As the novel begins, Salim Juma, in exile from Tanzania, opens up a gunny sack bequeathed to him by a beloved great-aunt. Inside it he discovers the past — his own family’s history and the story of the Asian experience in E... more »ast Africa. Its relics and artefacts bring with them the lives of Salim’s Indian great-grandfather, Dhanji Govindji, his extensive family, and all their loves and betrayals.

Dhanji Govindji arrives in Matamu — from Zanzibar, Porbander, and ultimately Junapur — and has a son with an African slave named Bibi Taratibu. Later, growing in prosperity, he marries Fatima, the woman who will bear his other children. But when his half-African son Husein disappears, Dhanji Govindji pays out his fortune in trying to find him again. As the tentacles of the First World War reach into Africa, with the local German colonists fighting British invaders, he spends more and more time searching. One morning he is suddenly murdered: he had spent not just his own money but embezzled that of others to finance the quest for his lost son.

“Well, listen, son of Juma, you listen to me and I shall give you your father Juma and his father Husein and his father…”

Part II of the novel is named for Kulsum, who marries Juma, Husein’s son; she is the mother of the narrator, Salim. We learn of Juma’s childhood as a second-class member of his stepmother’s family after his mother, Moti, dies. After his wedding to Kulsum there is a long wait in the unloving bosom of his stepfamily for their first child, Begum. It is the 1950s, and whispers are beginning of the Mau Mau rebellion.

Among the stories tumbling from the gunny sack comes the tailor Edward bin Hadith’s story of the naming of Dar es Salaam, the city Kulsum moves to with her children after her husband’s death. And gradually her son takes over the telling, recalling his own childhood. His life guides the narrative from here on. He remembers his mother’s store and neighbours’ intrigues, the beauty of his pristine English teacher at primary school, cricket matches, and attempts to commune with the ghost of his father. It is a vibrantly described, deeply felt childhood. The nation, meanwhile, is racked by political tensions on its road to independence, which comes about as Salim Juma reaches adolescence. With the surge in racial tension and nationalist rioting, several members of his close-knit community leave the country for England, America, and Canada.

I see this comedy now as an attempt to foil the workings of fate: how else to explain, what else to call, the irrevocable relentless chain of events that unfolded…

The title of Part III, Amina, is the name of Salim’s great unfulfilled love, and will also be the name of his daughter. He meets the first Amina while doing his National Service at Camp Uhuru, a place he feels he has been sent to in error. Amina is African, and their relationship inevitably causes his family anxiety, until the increasingly militant Amina leaves for New York. Salim becomes a teacher at his old school, and marries, but keeps a place for Amina in his heart. When she returns and is arrested by the more and more repressive government, Salim is hurriedly exiled abroad. He leaves his wife and daughter with the promise that he will send for them, knowing that he will not. The novel ends with Salim alone, the last memories coming out of the gunny sack, hoping that he will be his family’s last runaway.

ISBN-13: 9780385660655
ISBN-10: 0385660650
Publication Date: 5/10/2005
Pages: 352
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Anchor Canada
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Literature & Fiction >> General >> Literary
Literature & Fiction >> Authors, A-Z >> ( V ) >> Vassanji, M.J.

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Gunny Sack

Loading...