And Home Was Kariakoo: Memoir of an Indian African

By: M.G. Vassanji

M.G. Vassanji was born in East Africa and, like many East African Indians of his generation, he emigrated to the West. But Africa remained his primal home—the land whose colours and smells most beckoned to him, the land in which his family roots went deepest. 

In And Home Was Kariakoo, he travels to this homeland to draw a vivid portrait of East Africa today and tells the story of the Gujarati Indians of that region for whom Africa is both home and not home.  Entwined through Vassanji’s accounts is the story of his own childhood in Dar es Salaam.  Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, And Home Was Kariakoo is an insightful, thoughtful, deeply moving meditation on the Indians of East Africa and what it means to call a place one’s home. 

M.G. Vassanji is the author of ten books. The Gunny Sack won the Commonwealth Prize, The Book of Secrets and The In-Between World of Vikram Lall each won the Giller Prize, while the memoir A Place Within: Rediscovering India won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction.