From two-time Giller Prize winner M.G. Vassanji, one of Canada’s finest and most celebrated writers, comes a brilliant new novel that vividly examines the seemingly incongruous worlds of science, religion and desire. Nurul Islam is a world-renowned physicist, professor at Imperial College, London, and one half of the Islam-Rosenfeld theory, the first step in a grand unification of forces and a Theory of Everything. A family man profoundly influenced by his pious father, Nurul is happily married to Sakina Begum by an arranged marriage. They have three children. But when Nurul travels to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to give a public lecture at Harvard, he falls in love with a graduate student, Hilary Chase. At the same time, Nurul Islam’s outspoken, philosophical views about the nature of physics and God have earned him the ire of fundamentalist preachers in Pakistan. He makes enemies of the political and military establishments when he refuses to contribute to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons project. Meanwhile, a contingent of physicists begins a smear campaign, claiming that Nurul Islams’s contribution to the unification theory was plagiarized. All these events converge upon Sakina Begum who, smarting from her husband’s betrayal, unwittingly commits a betrayal of her own. Everything that has worked together as though preordained since his child - hood to take him to the pinnacle of scientific achievement suddenly falls apart. An exceptionally wise and intimate account of love, honour, guilt and genius, Everything There Is gives us an engaging portrait of a traditional, spiritual man facing the onslaught of inescapable forces.
Author
Moyez G. Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. Before coming to Canada in 1978, he attended MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialized in theoretical nuclear physics. From 1978-1980 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Atomic Energy of Canada, and from 1980 to 1989 he was a research associate at the University of Toronto. During this period he developed a keen interest in medieval Indian literature and history, co-founded and edited a literary magazine (The Toronto South Asian Review, later renamed The Toronto Review of Contemporary Writing Abroad), and began writing stories and a novel. In 1989, with the publication of his first novel, The Gunny Sack, he was invited to spend a season at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. That year ended his active career in nuclear physics. His contributions there he considers modest, in algebraic models and high spin states. The fact that he was never tenured he considers a blessing for it freed him to pursue his literary career. Vassanji is the author of six novels and two collections of short stories. His work has appeared in various countries and several languages. His most recent novel, The Assassin's Song, was short-listed for both the Giller Prize and the Governor-General's Prize for best novel in Canada. It has appeared in the US (Knopf) and India (Penguin) and is scheduled to appear in the UK (Canongate). His wife, Nurjehan, was born in Tanzania. They have two sons, Anil, and Kabir. He lives in Toronto, and visits Africa and India often. Awards: Giller Prize, twice; Harbourfront Festival Prize; Commonwealth First Book Prize (Africa); Bressani Prize. Order of Canada.
