KEY POINTS:
Where would contemporary English-language fiction be without writers of or from India? This vivid, big-scale novel, complete with blurb from an Australian publicist who can't punctuate, is the life of Karsan Dargwalla, an heir to holiness who wants to leave the spiritual world for the modern one.
For seven centuries, Karsan's family have been guardians of the shrine of a Sufi mystic in Gujarat. Nur Fazal the Wanderer arrived in their village "like a meteor". And throughout the book, scenes gaudy with jewels and magic describe his teachings, his legacy, the evolution of the shrines, tombs, temples that fill the compound to which generations of his ancestors have committed their lives. But thanks to his Christian teachers and a tubby Sikh driver with a technicolour truck who brings him news and newspapers from beyond, the young protagonist becomes convinced that he isn't meant to become the Sufi's next successor.
At first, he wants only to be ordinary and play cricket. Then "male stirrings and worldly desires" grow in him. When an astonishingly unlikely application ("I want to learn everything") wins him a scholarship to Harvard, continents and lifestyles away, he begins an agonised separation from his roots. And from his religion, because in mid-20th century India, the Sufi's messages of peace and reconciliation have given way to Hindu-Muslim bus burnings and village massacres, war with China or Pakistan. Karsan studies Keats, Camus, Plato, and wonders what all these anti-Vietnam War protests are about.
The sassy Marge leads him to Canada, where he becomes teacher and father. But East rather than West dominates his mind, as it does the book, and slowly, reluctantly, he is drawn back. He returns as visiting academic and bait for his terrorist brother. His father has been murdered, his village and its shrine destroyed. India has turned into a country where moderate Hindus worry about a 9/11 involving the Taj Mahal (yes, the Mumbai horrors of last year came chillingly close), and wish that Pakistan could somehow be flicked from sight. Even the revered Sufi seems to have been tainted with violence and death.
It's big, rich, occasionally lumbering and portentous. There are backgrounds like opera sets, and an edgy, ambivalent exploration of the ties between brothers. Motifs of duty, sacrifice and self-discovery are presented with compassion and the odd sermon. Right to the end, there are no easy answers. Sometimes there are no answers at all.
The Assassin'S Song
By M.G. Vassanji (Canongate $37)
* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.
