The Limits of the World: A Novel by Jennifer Acker (Goodreads Author)
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The Chandaria family—emigrants from the Indian-enclave of
Nairobi—have managed to flourish in America.
Premchand, the father, is a doctor who has worked doggedly to grow his
practice and give his family security; his
wife, Urmila, runs a business importing artisanal Kenyan crafts; and their son,
Sunil, after quitting the pre- med
track, has gotten accepted to a PhD program in philosophy at Harvard. But the
parents have kept a very important
secret from Sunil: his cousin, Bimal, is actually his older brother. And when
this previously hidden history is
revealed by an unforeseen accident, and the entire family is forced to return
to Nairobi, Sunil reveals his own well-kept, explosive secret: his Jewish-American girlfriend, who has accompanied him to Kenya, is, in fact, already his wife. Spanning four
generations and three continents, The
Limits of the World illuminates the vast
mosaic of cultural divisions
and ethical considerations that shape
the ways in which we judge one
another’s actions. A dazzling debut novel—written with
rare empathy and insight—it is a powerful depiction of how we prevent ourselves, unwittingly and otherwise, from understanding
the people we are closest to.
In the 1960's and 1970's, an exodus of Asians took place from East Africa. While they wished the newly independent countries - Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania- success and prosperity, many Asians felt that the future for them and their children was likely to be fraught with problems if they stayed put in Kenya. Besides the policy of "Africanisation", many Asians questioned whether there was a future for their children.
The expulsion of Asians from Uganda by the monster Idi Amin was perhaps the biggest single factor that made Asians feel that it was time to find a more permanent home and future for their families. The vast majority opted for Great Britain because their British passports entitled them to settle in Britain. Those who did not qualify to enter Britain (and some who did) applied in thousands to emigrate to the U.S.A., Canada, Australia and a handful of other countries.
I don't have the exact figures but I would estimate that between 1960 and 1975, well over a million displaced Asians put down roots in countries all over the globe. Each of our stories is different; my family owes its presence in Southern Alberta to a farming couple from Cardston, now deceased but forever remembered with gratitude and love.
Large numbers of Asians (people of Indian and Pakistani, heritage) did leave East Africa in the 1960s and early 70s for various reasons in the wake of 'independence'. However, to set the record straighter the numbers were no more that a couple of hundred thousand, rather than 1 million. In 1962 there were 179,000 in Kenya and by 1979 that was down to 78,000. In 1972, at the time Idi Amin expelled Asians from Uganda they numbered roughly 80,000. By 2003 there were 15,000, some of whom had returned once Amin was deposed. Tanzania's Asian population has remained pretty stable and is roughly what it was in 1967 i.e. 88,567. To be fair to the author, he did say that he wasn't quite sure what the number of Asian who left were but conjectured that it might have been in the region of one million.
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