EVERYTHING THERE IS

The newest novel from critically acclaimed and two time Giller winner MG Vassanji explores the tension between religion and science, tradition and progress.

One of the world's most celebrated physicists, Nurul Islam, has just shown that nature's two fundamental forces are one and the same. This is the first step in the much sought after Grand Unification, a theory that would explain everything. But his personal life is torn by forces that are all too human. Born in Undivided India, haunted by the Partition, he is a citizen of Pakistan and teaches at a top British university. He is a devout Muslim, but his pronouncements on the nature of God and physics makes him a target for extremists. He refuses to give his name to his nation's nuclear weapons program, which pits the political and military establishment against him; professional animosities carry on a bitter and prolonged campaign charging him with plagiarism; he falls in love with a young American physicist and marries a second time. Passing the critical age of forty, all he wants to do is his beloved physics. But now, having been declared a heretic, he has to go home to see his dying father.


Set in the 1960s-1980s, this is a novel inspired by, but not about, a real life. The two forces referred to above are the weak and the electromagnetic forces. The novel also looks obliquely at the controversy, in Islam and Christianity, does or can God interfere with his Creation.

M.G.Vassanji is the author of nine novels, two short story collections, two memoirs and a biography of Mordecai Richler. He has been awarded the Giller Prize twice, the Governor General's Prize, and the Commonwealth First Book Prize among others. He has been shortlisted for the Writers Trust Award, and India's Crossword Prize. His work has been translated into Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish, and Swahili. M. G.Vassanji was born in Nairobi, Kenya and raised in Tanzania. He lives in Toronto.