Amriika

M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to Canada in 1978, he attended M.I.T., and later was writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa in their prestigious International Writing Program. Vassanji’s fiction to date comprises five novels and a book of short stories: The Gunny Sack (1989), which won a Regional Commonwealth Writers Prize; No New Land (1991); Uhuru Street (short stories, 1992); The Book of Secrets (1994), a national bestseller and the winner of the inaugural Giller Prize; Amriika (1999); and, most recently, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003), which won The Giller Prize.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 that same year chosen as one of twelve Canadians on Maclean’s Honour Roll.M. G. Vassanji lives in Toronto.