Amriika

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The “Big Chill Masala” might be one way to summarize this
outstanding new novel by Giller prize winner M.G. Vassanji. The story
revolves around a middle-aged South-Asian American named Ramji, who is
recounting his bittersweet memories of the turbulent 1960s to a
mysterious stranger. In 1968, Ramji emigrated to the United States on a
scholarship from his homeland of Tanzania. As a foreign student, Ramji
finds himself stretched between the Asian, African, and American
cultures. Anxious to please everyone at first, he soon finds himself
unable to please anyone, not even himself.

Ramji is slowly drawn into the fringes of student radicalism until a
terrorist bomb planted by one of his associates kills someone. Alarmed
by his comrades’ use of violence and afraid for his own future, Ramji
severs his connections with his white radical friends. For the next two
decades, he makes a modest but respectable living as a small-time
publisher until, nearly a quarter of a century later, his past suddenly
catches up with him from a variety of directions.

Few people can sketch a portrait of North American society with as much
variety and sympathy as Vassanji. There are no real villains or heroes
in this novel, only characters with a varying mixture of strengths and
weaknesses. Although Ramji is often buffeted by life, he is not
portrayed as a powerless victim but as a traveler seeking to understand
and embrace the society he has adopted. This is a great read for anyone
who wants to relive the days of miniskirts and the military-industrial
complex from a slightly different perspective.