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    The Assassin's Song
    The Assassin's Song
    The Assassin's Song
    Audiobook14 hours

    The Assassin's Song

    Written by M.G. Vassanji

    Narrated by Firdous Bamji

    3/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The magnificent new novel from the award-winning author of The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (“This beautiful novel . . . is proof that fictional truth can illuminate an epoch in history like nothing else”—The Boston Globe).

    In the aftermath of the brutal violence that gripped western India in 2002, Karsan Dargawalla, heir to Pirbaag—the shrine of a mysterious, medieval sufi—begins to tell the story of his family and the shrine now destroyed. His tale opens in the 1960s: young Karsan is next in line after his father to assume lordship of the Shrine of the Wanderer, and take his place as a representative of God to the multitudes who come there. But he longs to be “just ordinary”—to play cricket and be part of the exciting world he reads about in the stacks of newspapers a truck driver brings him from all across India. And when, to his utter amazement, he is accepted at Harvard, he can’t resist the opportunity to go finally “into the beating heart of the world.”

    Despite his father’s epistolary attempts to keep Karsan close to traditional ways, the excitements and discoveries of his new existence in America soon prove more compelling, and after a bitter quarrel, he abdicates his successorship to the ancient throne. Yet even as he succeeds in his “ordinary” life—marrying and having a son (his own “child-god”), becoming a professor in suburban British Columbia—his heritage haunts him in unexpected ways. After tragedy strikes, both in Canada and in Pirbaag, he is drawn back across thirty years of separation and silence to discover what, if anything, is left for him in India.

    A story of grand historical sweep and intricate personal drama, a stunning evocation of the physical and emotional landscape of a man caught between the ancient and the modern, between legacy and discovery, between the most daunting filial obligation and the most undeniable personal yearning—The Assassin’s Song is a heartbreaking ballad of a life irrevocably changed.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 15, 2009
    ISBN9781440718380
    The Assassin's Song
    Author

    M.G. Vassanji

    M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa in the International Writing Program. He is the winner of the Giller Prize, the Bressani Literary Prize, the Regional Commonwealth Prize, and the Harbourfront Festival Prize. He lives in Toronto.

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    Reviews for The Assassin's Song

    3/5

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    • 3/5
      The Assassin’s Song tells the story of Karsan Dargawalla. Beginning with his childhood in rural India, Karsan becomes aware of his destiny to succeed his father as the spiritual leader of their community and the protector of The Shrine of the Wanderer – servicing all who come there to worship. However, Karsan begins to discover there is a much more exciting world beyond their home and – on a whim – applies and is accepted to study half a world away at Harvard University. What ensues is Karsan’s coming-of-age in a foreign land, but not without the constant tug of his family, his heritage and many tragedies trying to pull him back.Vassanji’s writing is beautiful – almost lyrical – throughout the novel. However he relies far too much on lyrical verse early in the book and the story evolves very slowly. Near the middle of the story, as Karsan is making his decision to leave his home, the story starts to pick up the pace and becomes a very interesting tale of his coming of age, successes and some rather humorous failures. The really draws us into Karsan’s life and makes the early parts of the story worth reading through. However, just when the story gains momentum, it flounders. Karsan becomes lost, but the story seems to get lost as well, failing to provide the ready much to cling onto. The last third of the book seems to really wander. Karsan’s brother is reintroduced near the end, but nothing about him or his relationship with Karsan is developed and we are left with a lot of new questions that are never answered. In the end, Karsan seems more an uninterested observer of his life rather than a participant in it.The Assassin’s Song had some interesting moments along the way and Vassanji’s writing is beautiful by its own right, but unless you are looking to immerse yourself in Indian culture, there won’t be much of a story to hold your interest.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good. Got some insights about India.
    • 2/5
      This could have been a good book but there were so many foreign words (in some cases 1 per sentence) (Hindu) that one could not get in the context of the story and so many characters that I could not keep track of that I did not finish this book. There were no helps in this book as in family tree, Hindu religious organization, or even a map. I read 50% of the book and decided life is too short to struggle this much with fiction. Read 180/336 pages. DNF
    • 3/5
      The tale of individuation has been told and told, but feeding the soil of this novel's garden of narratives is the less often explored, living history of saints and sahebs. "The Assassin's Song" dips into the colorful chronicles of a centuries-old lineage, seemingly in hopes of bringing up some fresh insight on the relevance of history to destiny. But the author unfortunately nurses the pedestrian neuroses of the humble, likable hero and leaves it to the end to toss off a disappointingly crisp nod to the alluring origins of the title's namesake, arguably the book's most interesting character. It's a novel that requires patience, empathy, and curiosity and offers no special facility with language--no delicious poetics or rhythm to inspire the reader's own momentum. And so one is left with the slow growth of an unwitting hero and the gradual decline of one of Southeast Asia's rich religious traditions and most fascinating periods of history into awkward plot devices. Recommended only for India buffs.
    • 3/5
      Some good to great writing and a look into the history, current and ancient, of the Indian sub-continent.
    • 3/5
      Pretty good. Got some insights about India.
    • 4/5
      Karsan is heir to position of saheb, but he feels it is too restrictive and almost impulsively goes to America to study. Essentially he tries to run away from his identity. And this is what I liked about the story -- it examines identity, and asks how much of it do we shape ourselves, and how much are we shaped by our ancestry, our heritage, our family, and our destiny? What does it mean to escape from the familial expectations; can we escape? The answers suggested here are not going to be the right answers for everyone, but it was good to walk with Karsan through his journey. A confusing start, perhaps because I am so unfamiliar with the Indian and religious terms. But I was able to understand the general idea of the intro and soon picked up on the intertwining stories and the larger narrative. The book gives me an entirely different perspective of India than I have from reading books by Rohinton Mistry.
    • 3/5
      The Assassin’s Song, by M.G. Vassanji comes with an impressive list of literary accolades, having been shortlisted for the Giller and the GG. Yet, for my part, there is a definite lack of simpatico or connection with Vassanji’s tale. The novel is set in India from Partition to the devastating religious violence of the early 21st century, following the timeless theme of father/son tension and sibling disharmony. There is a rich vein of material here to mine, and mine it Vassanji does. Yet there is a distinct distance to how Vassanji relates his story, a lack of emotional involvement that cools the narrative and shutters the reader.For the first third of the novel Vassanji spends considerable time setting the stage for the emotional impact of the denouement, offering up endless, almost jejune details regarding the protagonist’s, Karson Dargawalla, life as the next embodiment of the sufi mystic and demi-god who resides in the temple Karson’s father keeps, Pirbaag. From there we shift to the middle third in which Karson escapes to Harvard, and a renunciation of his birthright. Throughout this interminable backstory, Vassanji does little to draw in the reader, either by way of contextual clues as to language or cultural nuances, or by way of emotional investment. Karson’s father remains an aloof, unapproachable academic, his mother a frustrated, secretive if dutiful stereotype, and his brother an unknown, albeit cute, almost throw-away character. There are other characters who walk on and off-stage, uttering lines and sagacities, conveniently thrown in to move Karsan through the story-arc. It is not until the final third of the novel, Vassanji employs any emotional investment to draw in the reader. By then, for this reader, it’s too little too late. That Karsan’s brother is most likely a terrorist responsible for the devastation of Pirbaag, and the death of his own father, is almost a shrug. That Karsan submits, in the end, to destiny and the continuation of chicanery and religious charlatanism, seems contrived and cardboard. It is a competent novel. But it is a disappointing read. In the end, all I can offer is this: Vassanji is no Rohinton Mistry.
    • 2/5
      This could have been a good book but there were so many foreign words (in some cases 1 per sentence) (Hindu) that one could not get in the context of the story and so many characters that I could not keep track of that I did not finish this book. There were no helps in this book as in family tree, Hindu religious organization, or even a map. I read 50% of the book and decided life is too short to struggle this much with fiction. Read 180/336 pages. DNF