What you are : stories / M.G. Vassanji.

The send off -- My brilliant daughter -- An African problem -- Tova in Tel Aviv (you would look away) -- How to live longer -- The end of the world -- The sense of an ending -- What you are -- Speak sweet words, softly -- The king of cotton -- The way stop -- A shooting in Don Mills -- Memories -- An epiphany -- An American family.

Weaving between wistful memories of youthful ambition and the compromises and comforts of age, travelling between the streets of Dar es Salaam and Toronto, the characters in these stories must negotiate distance--between here and there; between lives imagined and lives lived; between expectation and disappointment; between inclusion and exclusion. Throughout, Vassanji engages passionately with the intellectual and political questions that inspire him as a writer and a citizen, while always matching the energy of his ideas with the empathy and emotional depth he invests in his characters. As with all Vassanji's finest work, What You Are stands as a model of artistic integrity and clarity of vision.