Moyez G. Vassanji (born 30 May 1950 in Kenya) is a Canadian novelist and editor, who writes under the name M. G. Vassanji. Vassanji's work has been translated into several languages. As of 2020, he has published nine novels, as well as two short-fiction collections and two nonfiction books. Vassanji's writings, which have received considerable critical acclaim, often focus on issues of colonial history, migration, diaspora, citizenship, gender and ethnicity. Early life and education M. G. Vassanji was born in Kenya to Indian immigrants and raised in Tanganyika (now Tanzania). He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, where he specialised in nuclear physics, before moving to Canada as a postdoctoral fellow in 1978. Career From 1980 to 1989 Vassanji was a research associate at the University of Toronto. During this period he developed an 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 fiction. Between 1989 and 2012, Vassanji published six novels, two collections of short stories, a memoir of his travels in India, and a biography of Mordecai Richler. In 1989, after the publication of his first novel, The Gunny Sack, Vassanji was invited to spend a season at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa. The Gunny Sack won a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990. He won the inaugural Giller Prize in 1994 for The Book of Secrets. That year, he also won the Harbourfront Festival Prize in recognition of his "achievement in and contribution to the world of letters," and was one of twelve Canadians chosen for Maclean's Magazines Honour Roll. In 1996 he was a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Shimla, India. He again won the Giller Prize in 2003 for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, the first writer to win this prize twice. In 2006, When She Was Queen was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award. The Assassin's Song, released in 2007, was short-listed for the 2007 Giller Prize, the Rogers Prize, and the Governor General's Prize in Canada, as well as the Crossword Prize in India. In 2009 his travel memoir, A Place Within: Rediscovering India, won the Governor-General's Prize for nonfiction. He has also been awarded the Commonwealth Regional Prize (Africa). His novel The Magic of Saida,