The Book of Secrets (42 page)

This book is a work of fiction. The town of Kikono, its
ADC
, and the other characters are all fictitious. Only the historical backdrop and geographical settings are real, though even here the purist may find some liberties taken.

I would like to thank the Rhodes House Library, Oxford, and the Imperial War Museum Library, London, for their open and generous facilities; and in particular I wish to acknowledge a debt here to the Librarian and the Assistant Librarian of Rhodes House for clarifying certain matters in relation to the bwanas of this book. This is also a good place to thank Begum and Pyarali for a dusty ride to Taveta; and the various folks in Tanga who welcomed a weary, curious, and unknown traveller one dawn, with a taxi driver who had been forced to foot it; and Zahir Dhalla for introductions. As well, Caroline Avens and others at Heinemann in Oxford have been generous with their hospitality.

I must thank various friends for their support — Arun Mukher-jee, Issa Shivji, Walter Bugoya, Fatma Aloo, and Francis Imbuga.

The Canada Council has been generous.

And so have Nurjehan and Anil, in their own way, with their encouragement and their patience even when it was difficult.

Finally I must thank Alex Schultz for sensitively and thoroughly reading the manuscript. And of course Ellen Seligman, who probed every secret in the book — patient, thorough, and persistent; the debt is enormous.

Excerpts titled “Governor’s Memoranda for
PC
s and
DC
s” in
Chapter 2
have been taken from “Confidential Memoranda for Provincial Commissioners and District Commissioners,” dated 1910, signed by Governor E. P. C. Girouard; excerpts from the Quran are from the translation of Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall (Mentor Book); and those from
Romeo and Juliet
in
Chapter 19
are from the Alexander Text (Collins, 1951).

The epigraph on
this page
is from the translation of the
Ruba’iyat
by Peter Avery and John Heath Stubbs (Penguin, 1981); the one on
this page
by Sir Thomas Browne is taken from the
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations
(1979); the riddle on
this page
is from the book
Swahili Tales
by Edward Steere (Society for Promotion of Christian Knowledge, 1933) and modified by me; the epigraphs on
this page
are my own renderings of a well-known Swahili proverb and an Ismaili ginan; the quote on
this page
is from a movie poster for
Gilda
; and the one from Auden on
this page
is from “You” in
Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden
(Vintage, 1971). And finally, the line from the Anarkali song in
Chapter 18
and
Miscellany (iv)
is my own rendering.

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 two books 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);
The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
(2003), which won The Giller Prize; and, most recently,
When She Was Queen
(short stories, 2005).

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.