No New Land [Paperback]

     Nurdin Lalani and his family, Asian immigrants from Africa, have come to the Toronto suburb of Don Mills only to find that the old world and its values pursue them. A genial orderly at a downtown hospital, he has been accused of sexually assaulting a girl. Although he is innocent, traditional propriety prompts him to question the purity of his own thoughts. Ultimately, his friendship with the enlightened Sushila offers him an alluring freedom from a past that haunts him, a marriage that has become routine, and from the trials of coping with teenage children. Introducing us to a cast of vividly drawn characters within this immigrant community, Vassanji is a keen observer of lives caught between one world and another.

   •  A novel of considerable charm and intelligence, informed by a delightful sense of irony. -- Mordecai Richler


   •  Vassanji probes beneath the surface to create a compelling and poignant portrait of human displacement. --Ottawa Citizen


   •  It is part of Vassanji's great talent to demonstrate that the minor changes -- unexpected love, sex, accusations -- in the life of a very modest man are, in fact, transformations of history. --Globe and Mail


   •  Vassanji, in charting a tiny part of the Canadian reality, offers up certain truths, thought-provoking, disturbing, but ultimately, and in a small way, hopeful. --Saturday NightM.G. VASSANJI is the author of seven novels, two collections of short stories, and two works of non-fiction. He has won the Giller Prize twice forThe Book of SecretsandThe In-Between World of Vikram Lall, and the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction forA Place Within: Rediscovering India. His other novels includeThe Gunny Sack,No New Land,Amriika,The Assassin's Song, and, mostlӍ