The Magic of Saida

by M.G. Vassanji

I have heard many positive things about this author but not read any books of us until this one.  I can certainly appreciate the acclaim he has received.

This is an incredible, heartbreaking book.  It is a wonderful story, about a man who has lived a "successful" but not necessarily happy life.  He is an African-Indian, whose father deserted him and his mother.  He doesn't feel entirely African and even less Indian. His mother sends him away to live with his Indian relatives.
He feels abandoned, he doesn't know where he really belongs.

He has a young female friend as a child, and later goes back to his home village. They have a brief affair and he leaves to pursue his life as a Doctor.  Political events inspire him and the girl he has wandered into a relationship/engagement with, to move to Canada.   They have a long, loveless marriage, and become successful.  Eventually they separate. 

One day one of the man's adopted "family" come to visit and tell him that his female friend had come looking for him while he was in training to be a doctor. No one had told him of her visit.

He decides to return to Africa to fulfill his promise of coming back to her.

While he is in Africa he meets several people who befriend him and who try to help him find the woman.
He eventually finds out that the woman had a child, his child, and that her husband took the child from her and divorced her.  His quest almost drives him to madness and almost costs him his life.

The book also includes a story line about two brothers, both poets, the first brother is wants to overthrow the german occupiers, the second brother is a nazi sympathizer and ends up taking his brothers poems and claiming them as his own.  He gets great fame for the poems and ends up betraying his brother to the Nazis.

The story is fascinating. You can feel the atmosphere of Africa.Informaiton is revealed in tiny bits as the story is told.  The pathos and poignancy of the lives of the characters are written with insight and affection. I loved this book!