Kenyan writer and physicist, was born in Nairobi, Kenya, to Indian parents, but grew up in Tanzania. When he was nineteen, he left the University of Nairobi on a scholarship to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States. He graduated with a PhD in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Pennsylvania. In 1978 he settled in Toronto, Canada, where he still lives with his Tanzanian-born wife, Nurjehan, and his two sons, Anil and Kabir. From 1978 to 1980 he held a postdoctoral fellowship at Atomic Energy of Canada, and from 1980 to 1989 he worked as a researcher at the University of Toronto.
While at the University of Toronto Vassanji started to write short stories and began working on his first novel He also developed a keen interest in medieval Indian history and literature and together with his wife cofounded the multicultural literary ...
