Synopses & Reviews
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 familys history and the story of the Asian experience in East Africa. Its relics and artefacts bring with them the lives of Salims 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, Huseins son; she is the mother of the narrator, Salim. We learn of Jumas childhood as a second-class member of his stepmothers 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 Hadiths story of the naming of Dar es Salaam, the city Kulsum moves to with her children after her husbands death. And gradually her son takes over the telling, recalling his own childhood. His life guides the narrative from here on. He remembers his mothers 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 Salims 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 familys last runaway.
Synopsis
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 familys history and the story of the Asian experience in East Africa. Its relics and artefacts bring with them the lives of Salims 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, Huseins son; she is the mother of the narrator, Salim. We learn of Jumas childhood as a second-class member of his stepmothers 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 Hadiths story of the naming of Dar es Salaam, the city Kulsum moves to with her children after her husbands death. And gradually her son takes over the telling, recalling his own childhood. His life guides the narrative from here on. He remembers his mothers 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 Salims 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 familys last runaway.
About the Author
M.G. Vassanji was born in Kenya, and raised in Tanzania. He took a doctorate in physics at M.I.T. and came to Canada in 1978. While working as a research associate and lecturer at the University of Toronto in the 1980s he began to dedicate himself seriously to a longstanding passion, writing.
His first novel, The Gunny Sack, won a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize and he was invited to be writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa. The novels success was a spur, Vassanji has commented: “It was translated into several languages. I was confident that this was what I could do, that writing was not just wishful thinking. In 1989 I quit my full-time job and began researching The Book of Secrets.” That celebrated, bestselling novel won the inaugural Giller prize, in 1994.
Vassanjis other books include the acclaimed novels No New Land (1991) and Amriika (1999), and Uhuru Street, a collection of stories. His unique place in Canadian literature comes from his elegant, classical style, his narrative reach, and his interest in characters trying to reconcile different worlds within themselves. The subtle relations of the past and present are also constants in his writing: “When someone asks you where you are from or who you are, there is a whole résumé of who you are. I know very few people who do not have a past to explain. That awareness is part of my work.”
M.G. Vassanji was awarded the Harbourfront Festival Prize in 1994 in recognition of his achievement in and contribution to the world of letters, and was in the same year chosen as one of twelve Canadians on Macleans Honour Roll. In 2003 he became the first writer to win the Giller Prize twice, when his bestselling novel The In-Between World of Vikram Lall gained the award. M.G. Vassanji lives in Toronto with his wife and two sons.
Reading Group Guide
1. How would you compare
The Gunny Sack to other novels by M.G. Vassanji you have read? Does it handle similar or different themes, and in what ways? You might consider issues of identity, relations between races, exile, emigration…
2. How does The Gunny Sack compare to other writers treatment of East Africa in the twentieth century? You might consider V.S. Naipaul (for instance, his novel A Bend in the River), Ernest Hemingway, etc.
3. What is the significance of the novels epigraphs?
4. How did the authors frequent use of Swahili and Gujarati words enhance or impede your experience of the novel?
5. How would you describe the character of the narrator, Salim Juma?
6. “The rainy season was at hand and before the hearing the ground had to be cleared of caterpillars.” How does M.G. Vassanji get across such a rich sense of place?
7. What were your criticisms of The Gunny Sack?
8. How do stories and memories interconnect and interweave in the novel? In what ways could this book itself be seen as a gunny sack?
9. What do the minor characters contribute to The Gunny Sack? There are many to choose from, but you might focus on Bibi Tarantibu, Edward bin Hadith, or Dhanji Govindjis “two jewels,” Ji Bai and Moti.
10. Why does Salim Juma go into exile at the end of the novel?
11. Her voice was sharp and precisely defined, her syllables clipped, beside which our shapeless self-conscious phonemes proceeded higgledy-piggledy, running into each other in a mumble.
(There speaks a true colonial, the voice of a conquered one, says the gunny voice from the corner in its most radical tone.
Shush, Shehrbanoo. Wasnt I conquered, didnt she vanquish me? Tell me.)
Discuss colonial relations in The Gunny Sack.
12. What did you make of the historical and political parts of the novel? Do they mingle well with its more personal stories and histories?
13. What do you make of the fact that all the parts of the book are named after women?
Author Q&A
Looking back at your first novel, fifteen years after it was published, how do you feel about it? Is there anything about The Gunny Sack you would change?This book has been very dear to me, although I have not read from it in many years. The first paragraphs and the last ones still echo in my head. This book was written without awareness of a mainstream audience; which is why for many it is their best among my books. I really cannot say. It is to me as intimate as Vikram Lall, but paradoxically more autobiographical.
What would you suggest to a book club guide to help them explore The Gunny Sack more successfully?
I would suggest that the book be experienced, without the reader getting bogged down with details or even non-English words.
To what extent and in what ways is The Gunny Sack an autobiographical novel?
The childhood years, I would say.
Which authors have been most influential to your own writing?
I have enjoyed Conrad, Coetzee, Saramago; more recently, Alice Munro, whose world is so different — outwardly — than mine. I have enjoyed the African writers Ngugi and Achebe, with some reservations. Also Graham Greene and Philip Roth; a bit of Don DeLillo.
If you weren't writing, what would you want to be doing for a living? What are some of your other passions in life?
I have told myself: philologist or musician; but actually if there were an alternative, I’d be a doctor working in the third world.