Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction

For MG Vassanji, India was a place alive only in the stories of his ancestors. Mysterious and exotic, it brimmed with wonder and tradition, a place welcoming and vibrant, yet still cruel and distant. An African by birth, it is only as an adult that he finally journeys to India for the first time, and in an instant the land that once existed in his imagination comes to life.

In a reverant portrait of words and images that spans the length of India, crossing the busiest city streets, the richest countrysindes, and introducing unforgettable characters, A Place Within is more than a travelogue--it is a true homecoming to a world that has always lived inside.

"Strikingly written...filled with myths, stories, legends, history, journal entries, and family narratives... One is grateful, in the end, for Vassanji's company as for his wonderful book." - The Globe and Mail

"A lovely, deeply personal book--one entirely worthy of Canada's top-shelf talents." - Edmonton Journal

"An utterly brilliant, evocative memoir that ranges across landscapes of culture, memory, identity and history.... A Place Within is the resonant chronicle of a sage, a traveler, a pilgrim. - Governor General's Literary Award Citatition

Finalist for the 2015 Charles Taylor Prize

In this travel memoir the author revisits the cities of his birth and growing up and over several journeys travels the length and breadth of the land--from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya, Zanzibar to Nairobi, Kilwa to Kigoma... "For a long time it seemed to me that I would never visit those lost dimensions, experience the land in its variety, experience the diversity of its people. I was wrong. All it required was the will to do just that... There were moments when the thrill of travel and discovery were such that I felt I could go on and on, from place to place, and never stop.

Interview in Macleans

Both Mordecai Richler and MG Vassanji are award-winning novelists who regarded themselves as outsiders in their respective societies--one a Jew in Quebec, the other an Indian from Africa who emigrated to Canada. In this biography Vassanji follows Richler's literary and personal trajectory from a rebellious childhood in Montreal's Orthodox Jewish community to agonized apprentice in Paris and finally to a major literary figure in the world.

"Respectful yet probing, [Vassanji] creates a solid and intriguing biography of one of the most private yet profound writers of the Canadian scene." - The Globe and Mail

"Sympathetic and distinguished." - Winnipeg Free Press

"Elegantly compact...Vassanji deliberately reads against the grain of the well-known Richlerian 'gruff caricature'." - Canadian Literature