The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

"Kenya, 1953: The British colony celebrates Queen Elizabeth's coronation, just as the Mau Mau guerrilla war begins to gain strength. In the midst of a violent and fearful climate of racist attitudes and calls for freedom, a diverse group of children meet and become friends in a small upcountry town. Eight-year-old Vic and his younger sister, Deepa, of Indian descent, Njoroge, an African boy; and British siblings Annie and Bill play all sorts of make-believe games reflecting the surrounding reality. When one day their innocent games are brought to a brutal conclusion, their world tumbles around them." "Against the backdrop of a chaotic and changing Kenya, we follow Vic into an adulthood still shrouded by the fear in which his childhood ended. He is an "in-between man." An Asian, he stands between the white colonials and the black Africans; his homeland is Kenya, but in the 1960s - in the early, heady years of independence and of Jomo Kenyatta's presidency - he feels unimportant and irrelevant to the new nation.

Prize history

• Giller Prize

  2003

  Winner