Although of Indian heritage, Vassanji was born inside Nairobi, Kenya in 1950, and raised within Tanzania. When attending a University of Nairobi he won a scholarship to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study nuclear physics. He completed his Ph.D. at a University of Pennsylvania. He moved to Canada around 1978 to work at a Chalk River nuclear power laboratories in Chalk River, Ontario. Inside 1980, he moved to Toronto to begin his writing career. Around 1989, Vassanji & his married woman Nurjehan Aziz, based The Toronto South Asian Review (TSAR). He sleep in Toronto by having his married woman & deuce sons.

Published work
Vassanji has published 5 novels: A Gunny Sack (1989) There are no Fresh Land (1991) A Book of Secrets (1994) Amriika (1999) A Within-Middle Globe of Vikram Lall (2003)

He is likewise andy skinner of the collection of short stories, Uhuru Street (1992).

Themes
A focus of Vassanji's function is the situation of Indians in East Africa. As a secondary theme, members of this community (such as himself) late undergo another migration to Europe, Canada, or a United Sates. Vassanji examines how else a lasts of his characters come affected by these migrations: "[the Indian diaspora] is very important...once I went to the US, suddenly the Indian connection became very important: the sense of origins, trying to understand the roots of India that we had inside us" (Kanaganayakam, p. Xxi). Vassanji looks at a relations between a Indian community, a native Africans & a colonial administration. Though pack of his characters ever link to to India, a united states's presence looms throughout his function. Vassanji is caring using a results of history & the interaction between family and public histories. A compound history of Kenya & Tanzania serves when a background for his operate, however these are a private histories of a independent characters that cause the narration. Vassanji's presentation of the past is never cut & dried. He avoids the impression of, a elementary, linear, historical truth emerging. Around very much of his function a mysteries of the past remain unsolved. (Kanaganayakam p. Twenty-two).

Awards and honours
Vassanji's operate has received considerable critical plaudit. A Gunny Sack won the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990. Inside 1994 he won a Harbourfront Festival Prize in recognition of his "achievement in and contribution to the world of letters." That season he was likewise one of xii Canadians chosen for Maclean's Magazine's Honour Roll. Vassanji won a initiatory Giller Prize in 1994 for The Book of Secrets. He once more won a Giller Prize in 2003 for The In-Mediate Globe of Vikram Lall. He was a number one writer to win a Giller Prize further than when. Inside 2004, Alice Munro became the select's 2nd repetition winner.

Within 2005 he was made the Member of the Order of Canada.

Reference
Kanaganayakam, C. 1991. "Broadening the Substrata: An Interview With M.G. Vassanji." Globe Literature Written around English. 31, Two: 19-35.