180:. While living with them he encounters Alfred Corbin and his wife Anne. After this encounter Corbin visits Khanoum, Ali's grandmother, and offers to pay for Ali's education. Khanoum refuses and contact between Corbin and Ali is dropped. Eventually, Khanoum falls into poverty and Ali goes to live with Pipa, Remti and their two daughters.
195:
in the early 1950s, Fernandes teaches at a boys' school. Eventually, he is forced to also teach at the inferior girls school where he becomes infatuated with a teenager named Rita. Ali, now a successful married man in his thirties, also falls in love with teenage Rita. He begins sending her notes and
183:
Living with Ali once more, Pipa begins to obsess over
Mariamu. He builds a private shrine to her within his shop where he keeps Corbin's diary. Through his son, Pipa is eventually able to learn to spell and read the word Mariamu, and is able to read this word in Corbin's diary. Though he questions
151:
The narrative then shifts to
Mariamu's husband Pipa. Initially enraged at the thought that Mariamu was not a virgin when they married, he gradually grows to accept and love her. When their son Ali Akber Ali is born and has fair skin and grey eyes, their marriage becomes strained again. Meanwhile,
172:
Pipa returns home only to find that
Mariamu has been raped and murdered. After her death Pipa discovers that she had stolen Corbin's diary. Pipa believes that the diary holds the secret to Ali's paternity, but since he cannot speak English, and is illiterate, he is unable to read its secrets.
143:
in the late 1980s, a retired school teacher named Pius
Fernandes was given an English language diary by one of his former students Feroz, now a shopkeeper. The diary entries, written between 1910 and 1914, are an account written by Alfred Corbin, Assistant District Commissioner, a low ranking
200:. Ali eventually becomes successful in London and briefly encounters Corbin. However, letters left to Fernandes by a colleague and friend who corresponded with Corbin's wife, reveal that Corbin and Ali met several times though whether Ali's paternity was revealed is remained hidden.
34:
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colonial official sent to the small town of Kikono. While there, Corbin becomes intrigued by a young woman named
Mariamu whom he saves from an exorcism. Before she is married, Mariamu also briefly nurses Corbin when he is stricken with
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In the present, Rita, now divorced from Ali, returns to Dar to reclaim the diary on behalf of her former husband. Fernandes willingly relinquishes both the diary and his research notes to Rita.
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After a time, Pipa remarries a woman named Remti. As a consequence of this marriage his son is sent to live with his maternal grandparents in
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has reached the small town of Kikono and Pipa is enlisted as a messenger, first by Corbin on behalf of the
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for
Canadian fiction. Vassanji also became the award's first-ever repeat winner in 2003 for his novel
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Mariamu's spirit about the true paternity of their son he is never able to obtain a direct answer.
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The narrative shifts once more, to a young Pius
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when she eventually responds he convinces her to run away with him to
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For other uses of the phrase "Book of
Secrets", see
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164:. After being arrested by the
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684:Novels by M. G. Vassanji
358:Mercy among the Children
313:The Love of a Good Woman
40:McClelland & Stewart
644:The Sleeping Car Porter
615:Souvankham Thammavongsa
168:as a messenger for the
689:Novels set in Tanzania
620:How to Pronounce Knife
83:McClelland and Stewart
16:Book by M. G. Vassanji
632:What Strange Paradise
118:, published in 1994.
679:1994 Canadian novels
454:Through Black Spruce
353:David Adams Richards
27:The Book of Secrets
656:Study for Obedience
489:The Sentimentalists
418:The Time in Between
265:The Book of Secrets
111:The Book of Secrets
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154:World War I
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207:References
525:Hellgoing
78:Published
58:Language
406:Runaway
170:Germans
166:English
162:Germans
158:English
62:English
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139:In
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23:.
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