In Between World of Vikram Lal

It is 1953 in colonial Kenya, and eight-year-old Vikram Lall witnesses the celebration of Queen Elizabeth's coronation, even as the Mau Mau guerilla war challenges British rule. Vic and his sister Deepa, whose grandfather came to Kenya from Punjab to build the railways, must find their place in this uncertain world of violent upheaval, confusing loyalties and conflicting ideologies. And among their newly acquired playmates, the brother and sister, neither Black nor White, find themselves in between British Bill and Annie, and the African Njoroge. These friendships will haunt them the rest of their lives. We follow Vic from the changing Africa of the fifties, to the sixties— a time that holds immense promise. But when that hope is betrayed by the corruption, fear and repression of the seventies and eighties, Vic finds himself drawn into the official orbit of graft and powerbrokering. Njoroge, on the other hand, can abandon neither the idealism of his youth nor his love for Deepa. Neither the cynicism of the one nor the idealism of the other can avert the tragedies that await. Acute and bittersweet, vividly portrayed and finely nuanced, The InBetween World of Vikram Lall is told in the voice of the exiled Vic from the shores of Lake Ontario, as he contemplates the historical events that have shaped him— `one of Africa's most corrupt men'— and the choices he has made.