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- The Citizen Voices Team
A Place Within: Rediscovering India - Non-fiction
by M.G. Vassanji
It is a great honour to receive this award & endorsement—especially for a first book of non-fiction. To speak briefly of the book: it took many years & many journeys—by air, by train & road, by foot—many pilgrimages, to finish it; the experiences it describes began with one nervous visit to an ancestral homeland and became an overwhelming desire, an obsessive quest to understand who I was, what I was, why I was who I was—this obsessed person. It describes the thrills and the heartaches of such a quest; for which alone I am fortunate. This award is a bonus.
I would like to thank my publisher for her trust and support; my agent for his boundless enthusiasm; my family for letting me get away; and to all the people in India who became my new and lasting friends, who accompanied me, supported me, housed and fed me, and variously let me peek into their lives—who helped to reopen a lost world for me. They gave me not only this book, but also a novel.
Finally, I would like to thank the Canada Council for its continuing support of the arts; one cannot imagine what the culture of this country would be without its making so many artistic endeavours possible. One remembers only too well one’s first, faltering penurious step--& the helping hand that allowed one go forward.
