num_pages: 320
description: The Magic of Saida tells the haunting story of Kamal a successful Canadian doctor who in middle age and after decades in North America decides to return to his homeland of East Africa to find his childhood sweetheart Saida. Kamal's journey is motivated by a combination of guilt hope and the desire to unravel the mysteries of his childhood--mysteries compounded by the fact that Kamal is the son of an absent Indian father from a well-to-do family and a Swahili African mother of slave ancestry. Through a series of flashbacks we watch Kamal's early years in the ancient coastal town of Kilwa where he grows up in a world of poverty but also of poetry sustained by his friendship with the magical Saida.This world abruptly ends when Kamal is sent away by his mother to live with his father's family in the city. There the academically gifted boy grows up as a dark Indian eventually going to university and departing for Canada. Left behind to her traditional fate is Saida now a beautiful young woman. Decades later Kamal's guilt pulls him back to Kilwa . . . where he discovers what happened to Saida during a harrowing night of sinister rites. This complex revelatory sweeping and shocking book is a towering testament to the magical literary powers of M.G. Vassanji.
language: English
title: The Magic of Saida
publisher: Doubleday Canada