THE. EMPIRE READS BACK:M.G. VASSANJI'S THE BOOK OFSECRETS

Abstract

The driving impetus behind postcolonial literatures leads not only to technical ingenuity, liminal insights, or polyphonic perspectives, but also, in part, to a retaliatory discursive thrust that attempts setting the record straight. In almost every postcolonial/third worldist narrative, one can discern a political subtext that strives towards articulating a contradistinctive zeitgeist. There seems to be an urgency here to compensate for lost times, for denied opportunities, and for blank spaces in the narrative of empire that has erstwhile been occupied by what Michel Foucault calls le discours dominant produced by apologists of the colonial enterprise. M.G. Vassanji's novel The Book of Secrets (1994) makes its intervention by cleverly creating a colonial text, taking the form of a diary, the titular book of secrets, and then situating it within a context that foregrounds the limitations of the colonial perspective without necessarily condemning it outright. .