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A review by millennial_dandy
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall by M.G. Vassanji
2.0
"I long believed that mine were crimes of circumstance, of finding oneself in a situation and simply going along with the way of the world." P.372
I dilly-dallied for five months reading this novel. Not because it was boring me, or because a lack of familiarity with the subject matter made it hard to get stuck into (though it's true that I knew virtually nothing about Kenya's independence from England and even less about the chaos that ensued). This was a hard one to get through because I could tell almost immediately that while I was interested in learning something of those events and of that time period through the novel, this was a book with a... difficult perspective.
Our protagonist, the titular Vikram, is born into an established Desi family in Kenya and the narrative opens in 1953. The very first characters we meet besides our protagonist are his sister and their three childhood playmates; a boy called Njoroge, and a brother and sister from an English family. Of this period of his life, Vikram says:
This rather ominous statement, given to us on page one, forms the backbone of the entire narrative and never truly leaves us.
Because, you see, Vassanji seems to be trying to accomplish a few things in this novel. Things that snarl up within each other like: the legacy of colonialism, strained race relations between majority and minority ethnic groups, a corrupt post-colonialist government, violent freedom fighters who sprang up out of an additional ostracised minority group. And there's also a Romeo and Juliet style love story that predictably ends badly. Not to mention the underlying question posed in the title of: where in this new world do people like Vikram belong/do people like Vikram (i.e., Asian families long established in Kenya) belong in this new world?
There's... a lot going on.
All of this getting mixed up together in the stew of a novel should have made for some compelling plot points and nicely complex and nuanced characterization of all of our main characters.
It does not.
Because, you see, Vassanji cleverly lets us in on the stance he's going to take on all of this kerfuffle in the title; that's right -- this is a centrist take. A 'there were bad people on both sides' take.
He pays a lot of lip service to the idea that Kenya gaining independence from the British is good, actually, but then every single British character in the story is decent and good and they all have tragic things happen to them. And all of the freedom fighters/Mau Mau we meet are pretty objectively bad people who murder children only to get shunted sideways in a pathetic little heap once the new, crooked regime takes over.
So that was a choice.
There's a large cast of recurring characters on top of a large number of historical events/plot points, and that weighs things down too because not every character we meet has the space to be equally fleshed out, and so many of them end of fulfilling two-dimensional archetypes. Vikram's sister, Seema, and Njoroge in particular suffer from this problem.
Vikram himself, our protagonist and narrator, is also deeply uninteresting. He tells us in the book's first paragraph that he's essentially the villain of the story. But then kind of hedges that assertion, much like he does every other thought he has. The lad lives this wild life and yet never takes a single stand on anything. Does he support his sister's forbidden romance with Njoroge? Kind of. How does he end of with his wife? She's kind of just given to him. How does he end up being this super high-level con-man? Eh, he sort of just falls into it accidentally.
Passive protagonists can be interesting if the point of their passivity is to be a POV character for the reader, the fly on the wall, the observer. But if Vikram's this story's Nick Carraway, we desperately needed and never got a Jay Gatsby.
And it's all in service to this idea that he can't pick a side because there are 'good and bad people on both sides.' So, what's the result of this maddening centricity? He ends up getting swept up in a tide of decidedly not good things and just runs around being a menace for the last third of the book. Thanks, I hate it.
The framing device of Vikram's exile in Canada and his relationships there ultimately doesn't matter for as much room in the narrative as it takes up, and in the end that central question of identity, of 'where do I belong?' gets answered, but not in a way that feels engaging or new. He belongs in Kenya. Why does he belong there? Is it because of the connection he feels to his grandfather who helped build the railway there? Is it because he grew up there? Is it because he travels elsewhere and realizes home was the place he came from? Who knows because we never find out. He just decides to mosey on back after Njoroge's incredibly forgettable and ultimately unimportant son goes back there and gets arrested.
The entire last act (the last 100 pages or so) feels rushed -- a jarring contrast to the texture and care that were clearly put into the first half of the novel set during Vikram's childhood.
And that's a pity, because in terms of perspective and raw writing talent, Vassanji had everything needed to write a very nuanced and fresh take on a tumultuous time in Kenya's (and Africa's more broadly) history. But, alas.
That all being said, I will give him credit for having some really lovely descriptive passages and a banger of an opening paragraph:
I dilly-dallied for five months reading this novel. Not because it was boring me, or because a lack of familiarity with the subject matter made it hard to get stuck into (though it's true that I knew virtually nothing about Kenya's independence from England and even less about the chaos that ensued). This was a hard one to get through because I could tell almost immediately that while I was interested in learning something of those events and of that time period through the novel, this was a book with a... difficult perspective.
Our protagonist, the titular Vikram, is born into an established Desi family in Kenya and the narrative opens in 1953. The very first characters we meet besides our protagonist are his sister and their three childhood playmates; a boy called Njoroge, and a brother and sister from an English family. Of this period of his life, Vikram says:
"I call forth for you here my beginning, the world of my childhood [...] It was a world of innocence and play, under a guileless and constant sun; as well, of barbarous cruelty and terror lurking in darkest night; a colonial world of repressive, undignified subjecthood, as also of seductive order and security -- so that long afterwards we would be tempted to wonder if we did not hurry forth too fast straight into the morass that is now our mal-formed freedom. p.5
This rather ominous statement, given to us on page one, forms the backbone of the entire narrative and never truly leaves us.
Because, you see, Vassanji seems to be trying to accomplish a few things in this novel. Things that snarl up within each other like: the legacy of colonialism, strained race relations between majority and minority ethnic groups, a corrupt post-colonialist government, violent freedom fighters who sprang up out of an additional ostracised minority group. And there's also a Romeo and Juliet style love story that predictably ends badly. Not to mention the underlying question posed in the title of: where in this new world do people like Vikram belong/do people like Vikram (i.e., Asian families long established in Kenya) belong in this new world?
There's... a lot going on.
All of this getting mixed up together in the stew of a novel should have made for some compelling plot points and nicely complex and nuanced characterization of all of our main characters.
It does not.
Because, you see, Vassanji cleverly lets us in on the stance he's going to take on all of this kerfuffle in the title; that's right -- this is a centrist take. A 'there were bad people on both sides' take.
He pays a lot of lip service to the idea that Kenya gaining independence from the British is good, actually, but then every single British character in the story is decent and good and they all have tragic things happen to them. And all of the freedom fighters/Mau Mau we meet are pretty objectively bad people who murder children only to get shunted sideways in a pathetic little heap once the new, crooked regime takes over.
So that was a choice.
There's a large cast of recurring characters on top of a large number of historical events/plot points, and that weighs things down too because not every character we meet has the space to be equally fleshed out, and so many of them end of fulfilling two-dimensional archetypes. Vikram's sister, Seema, and Njoroge in particular suffer from this problem.
Vikram himself, our protagonist and narrator, is also deeply uninteresting. He tells us in the book's first paragraph that he's essentially the villain of the story. But then kind of hedges that assertion, much like he does every other thought he has. The lad lives this wild life and yet never takes a single stand on anything. Does he support his sister's forbidden romance with Njoroge? Kind of. How does he end of with his wife? She's kind of just given to him. How does he end up being this super high-level con-man? Eh, he sort of just falls into it accidentally.
Passive protagonists can be interesting if the point of their passivity is to be a POV character for the reader, the fly on the wall, the observer. But if Vikram's this story's Nick Carraway, we desperately needed and never got a Jay Gatsby.
And it's all in service to this idea that he can't pick a side because there are 'good and bad people on both sides.' So, what's the result of this maddening centricity? He ends up getting swept up in a tide of decidedly not good things and just runs around being a menace for the last third of the book. Thanks, I hate it.
The framing device of Vikram's exile in Canada and his relationships there ultimately doesn't matter for as much room in the narrative as it takes up, and in the end that central question of identity, of 'where do I belong?' gets answered, but not in a way that feels engaging or new. He belongs in Kenya. Why does he belong there? Is it because of the connection he feels to his grandfather who helped build the railway there? Is it because he grew up there? Is it because he travels elsewhere and realizes home was the place he came from? Who knows because we never find out. He just decides to mosey on back after Njoroge's incredibly forgettable and ultimately unimportant son goes back there and gets arrested.
The entire last act (the last 100 pages or so) feels rushed -- a jarring contrast to the texture and care that were clearly put into the first half of the novel set during Vikram's childhood.
And that's a pity, because in terms of perspective and raw writing talent, Vassanji had everything needed to write a very nuanced and fresh take on a tumultuous time in Kenya's (and Africa's more broadly) history. But, alas.
That all being said, I will give him credit for having some really lovely descriptive passages and a banger of an opening paragraph:
My name is Vikram Lall. I have the distinction of having been numbered one of Africa's most corrupt men, a cheat of monstrous and reptilian cunning. To me has been attributed the emptying of a large part of my troubled country's treasury in recent years. I head my country's List of Shame. These and other descriptions actually flatter my intelligence, if not my moral sensibility. But I do not intend here to defend myself or even seek redemption through confession; I simply crave to tell my story. p.3