Amriika by Vassanji M ISBN 9781551997094, 1551997096 instant download

Amriika by Vassanji M ISBN 9781551997094, 1551997096 instant download

Amriika is a novel of betrayal, disillusionment, and discovery set in America during three highly charged decades in the nation’s history. In the late sixties, Ramji, a student from Dar es Salaam, East Africa, arrives in an America far different from the one he dreamed about, one caught up in anti-war demonstrations, revolutionary lifestyles, and spiritual quests. As Ramji finds himself pulled by the tumultuous currents of those troubled times, he is swept up in events whose consequences will haunt him for years to come. Decades later in a changed America, having recently left a marriage and a suburban existence, an older Ramji, passionately in love, finds himself drawn into a set of circumstances which hold terrifying reminders of the past and its unanswered questions.

The immigrant from Dar Es Salaam who narrates many parts of this novel by Vassanji (The Book of Secrets) tells a compelling story of rebellion and its aftereffects, but a pervasive stylistic blandness lessens its impact. Ramji comes to America in 1968 to study at a technological institute in Cambridge, Mass. His extensive soul-searching during college involves participation in student demonstrations and residency at the ashram of a local guru. The novel then jumps 25 years ahead. Many of Ramji's revolutionary classmates have disappeared into comfortable middle-class lives, and Ramji himself is trapped in an unhappy marriage. After a divorce, he moves to Santa Monica, where he works for a political newspaper and lives with the beautiful student who wrecked his marriage. When he offers shelter to a young man who turns out to be a suspect in a couple of politically motivated bombings, he finds his home life dismantled by an unfortunate intersection of past and present. The story jumps intermittently from third-person to first-person narrative, a quirk sometimes revelatory, but other times merely jarring and gratuitous. Vassanji's strengths lie in his shrewd but economical characteri