The Assassin's Song

The Assassin's Song
Author	M. G. Vassanji
Country	Canada
Language	English
Genre	Literary fiction
Publisher	Doubleday in Canada; Knopf in United States; Penguin in India
Publication date	August 21, 2007
Pages	336 pp
ISBN	978-0-385-66351-9 (Doubleday); ISBN 978-1-4000-4217-3 (Knopf)
OCLC	122707173

Last updated February 27, 2019

The Assassin's Song is a novel by M. G. Vassanji, published in 2007 by Doubleday Canada. It is the story of a young Indian boy (Karsan Dargawalla) whose dream is to escape his family's religious legacy. He wants to be ordinary: to go to school, play cricket, talk to girls, and make his own choices. He tries to escape by traveling to the United States for college (at Harvard) and eventually settling in Canada (in B.C.). The novel also contains the in-depth narrative of his ancient forebear.

Moyez G. Vassanji, CM is a Canadian novelist and editor, who writes under the name M. G. Vassanji. Vassanji's work is known throughout North America, and in Africa, and South Asia, and has been translated into several languages. As of 2016, he has published eight novels, as well as a number of short fiction and nonfiction collections. Vassanji's writings, which have received considerable critical acclaim, often focus on issues of migration, diaspora, citizenship, gender and ethnicity.

Doubleday Canada is an imprint of the publishing company Random House of Canada. The company used to be known as Forboys. It was incorporated in 1936, and since 1945 it has been known as Doubleday Canada Limited. Since 1986 Doubleday Canada Limited has been owned by Bertelsmann.

British Columbia is the westernmost province of Canada, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. With an estimated population of 5.016 million as of 2018, it is Canada's third-most populous province.

It was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.

The Giller Prize, is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward.

The Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize is a Canadian literary award presented by Rogers Communications and the Writers' Trust of Canada after an annual juried competition of works submitted by publishers. Alongside the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the Giller Prize, it is considered one of the three main awards for Canadian fiction in English.

External links

Chapter One - Random House Canada

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