![]() They engage in protests with slogans like “Let them go! The Earth for the Young! Let the Fogeys Die!”, viewing the aged as getting in the way of young people. The young feel as though they are not able to make their place in the world because of the proliferance of older people being returned to youth. Rejuvenation creates a series of social divides: between the aged and the young, the rich and the poor, and between medical ideas and religious. He invites us to explore what would happen in a world that had a “cure” for ageing. Vassanji invites us into the political questions raised by technology. Vassanji creates a world that fears its past, that tries for an eternal present. These memories are pathologized in this world and are considered a medical disease colloquially called “nostalgia”. But, memories are hard to erase and occasionally these memories resurface. Vassanji writes a near future fiction story in which immortality has been achieved, but in this future, everyone who undergoes rejuvination (the age reversal process) simultaneously has the memories of their past life erased for the new life as a younger person. Vassanji’s Nostalgia is a tale of memory’s ability to persist. Memory is powerful and it can be fleeting, but M.G. ![]() Vassanji’s Nostalgia (Anchor Canada, 2016) ![]()
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