I just finished The Book of Secrets by M. G. Vassanji who spoke at our convocation this June. A layered book about, as the title suggests, the secrets carried in journals, notes, and archives.
it is a magic bottle, this book, full of captured spirits; … Yes, we should steal this book, if we could, take back our souls, our secrets from him. …
Because it has no end, this book, it ingests us and carries us with it, and so it grows. (p. 1-2)
Vassanji uses the novel to take back East Africa from the colonial stories, to tell about the English as if they were the natives seen through the eyes of the Indian shopkeepers, teachers and later immigrants.
Vassanji, M. G., The Book of Secrets, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994.