- Title: The Apparition
- Author: M.G. Vassanji
- Genre: Fiction
- Publisher: Penguin Random House Canada
- Pages: 304
In the first pages of two-time Giller Prize-winning M.G. Vassanji’s new novel The Apparition, readers are introduced to the titular phenomenon: a sphere, shifting in colour and texture, appearing and vanishing above medieval Delhi during the period of the Delhi Sultanate at the beginning of the 14th century. The vision is “a little bigger than the brightest star,” notes the novel’s narrator, Amir Hassan al-Shirazi, a Sufi poet and historian.
The cultural and religious diversity of the city assures that no two communities will agree on just what the apparition means. The increasingly frayed Sultan Alauddin Khilji dispatches his poet laureate, Amir Hassan, on a recon mission among the people, which reveals a simmering unease that has built out of collective trepidation about the unknown. Religious intolerance grows, ancient disputes boil over, madness grips the ailing Sultan, there are public executions, and animals begin acting in strange ways.
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The setting is important, of course – Vassanji blends the stuff of history with elements of myth, folklore and religious tradition to concoct a magical realism that feels unsettlingly familiar in its tensions. It’s the specificities of time and place and relationships that shake off most of the residue of allegory and give The Apparition more of a Borgesian air; often it carries that wondrous feeling that you have come across something secret and ancient and strange. For those who don’t know the intricacies of medieval Indian religious and socioeconomic life and conflict (guilty), there is the jarring effect of trying to keep track of which groups have problems with who and why. But it soon becomes clear that, while those complexities lend Amir Hassan’s tale an essential feel of authenticity, untangling them isn’t the whole point.
One of the main questions The Apparition raises is, “Is it possible to live in harmony with one another?” We confront now, as we have forever, religious and cultural strife; here, the book’s vision of 14th-century Delhi is familiar, even while appearing alien. In the story’s second part, Vassanji ups the weirdness ante as Avians – humanoids with bird heads who built their civilization, hidden from human violence, high in the mountains – descend upon the city. The apparition turns out to have been a cloud of spying birds, surveying the human world to see if it was safe for the Avians to make contact.
M.G. Vassanji blends Indian history with elements of myth, folklore and religious tradition to concoct a magical realism in The Apparition.Supplied
The reveal plunges the city, and Amir Hassan, into even more confusion than before, and it’s here that The Apparition’s myriad ideas blossom. It is always illuminating to be reminded that the complexity and potential for poignancy in a single human life seems infinite, and Amir Hassan, a curious and sensual but devout seeker, both cautious and quietly courageous, provides a compelling example. But Vassanji’s refusal to make him a hero – he is certainly flawed, and at the mercy of fate – grounds The Apparition in the “realism” side of magical realism. Amir Hassan’s close attention to his life raises all kinds of complicated questions about the concept of home, exile, the immigrant experience, the utility of religion and its impact on and between societies, the influence of literature on civilization and its imperial uses, and the limits of bridging cultures, to name a few.
As the Avians take over and attempt to bring their own type of peace and order to Delhi, Amir Hassan begins to consider that, although their ways are different, the rule of the bird people seems far less violent than Alauddin’s, and perhaps the world’s great problem is simply human nature. In the third part of the book, he is chosen to be the human that will help develop the library of Birdland (these kinds of names are the only writing choice that conjures a slight feeling of silliness). He grasps the minds of men and Avians through his beloved literature, becomes woven into the social fabric of Birdland, and pines for Delhi.
It’s also during that time that Amir Hassan discovers the terrible secret that has allowed the Avian civilization to survive, and The Apparition earns extra topicality in its disquieting reminder of nature’s boundless cruelty. A note in the first pages of the book, between Vassanji’s dedication to his grandson Mihir and an introduction to the cast of characters, ties the horrifying reveal to our present moment.
There’s a nauseous feeling that rises when we gaze at the long view of history and notice that, despite our advances, little has changed, and in certain cases things are much worse. One gets the sense that, as Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle in True Detective, says: “Time is a flat circle.”
Maybe the wheel is inescapable. But Amir Hassan’s account of his time on Earth is not hopeless, nor does Vassanji settle for the low-hanging fruit of easy or hopeful resolution. Inside the novel’s otherworldly vision, he artfully invokes the ambiguity of reality, and like an apparition, that nagging question shifts into something else: “What might the cost of harmony be, and who gets to decide?”