M.G. Vassanji The Assassin's Song

Annotation

Karsan Dargawalla, heir to the shrine of a mysterious, medieval sufi begins to tell the story of his family and the destroyed shrine in the aftermath of the violence that gripped western India in 2002. His tale begins in the 1960s, and young Karsan wishes above all else to be ordinary. and when he is accepted to Harvard he can't resist the opportunity to escape his hereditrary obligation. After a bitter quarrel with his father that leads him to abdicate his successorship, he marries and has a son in Canada, but after tragedy strikes in Canada and India, he is drawn back after thirty years to see if anything is left for him... 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.