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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →M. G. Vassanji’s Everything There Is is a work of fiction inspired by aspects of physicist Abdus Salam’s life. In a 2024 interview with Scroll, Vassanji explains that the novel grew from a question that stayed with him: how could someone who understood the laws of physics also pray? His answer was not a biography of Salam, but an imagined life in which science, faith, memory and belonging could meet.
Why Vassanji chose Abdus Salam as an inspiration
Vassanji’s own training in theoretical physics made Salam a compelling starting point. The question was not simply how a scientist could hold religious beliefs; it was how scientific understanding and devotion might coexist within one person. Vassanji says he did not set out to settle that question. Instead, he used fiction to explore it.
The interview describes Salam as the inspiration for Nurul Islam, the novel’s fictional physicist and professor. Islam’s life resembles aspects of Salam’s, but he is a character, not a documentary portrait. The distinction matters: the novel’s events and invented scenes should not be read as evidence about what Salam did or thought.
Vassanji captures the character’s mystical way of speaking about God with a line that is his own reflection, not Salam’s: “I’m not a believer. But if I was, that’s the way I would talk.” The remark points to the imaginative leap at the heart of the book: a writer can enter a perspective without claiming it as his own.
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How the novel brings science and faith together
Physics offers a way of describing the world through laws and explanations; religious devotion involves another kind of relationship with existence. Vassanji’s premise places those outlooks in the same life rather than treating them as mutually exclusive. Through Nurul Islam, he can ask what wonder, uncertainty and belief might mean to someone whose work depends on rigorous thought.
The interview presents this as an open literary inquiry, not a proof that science leads to faith or that faith answers scientific questions. Vassanji says he has not resolved the tension. The novel’s interest lies in letting the question remain human and personal.
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Why it is also a novel about Partition and home
For Vassanji, the book’s concerns extend beyond the scientist’s inner life. The interview connects it to Partition, inherited memory, displacement, family and the search for home. Vassanji did not live through Partition himself; his interest is informed in part by his wife’s family history. He recounts how relatives were scattered across countries and describes a later visit to the family home in Amritsar, where family members met after being separated by the history of Partition.
That personal account helps explain why the novel’s questions of belonging are not merely geographical. A home can persist as family memory, be lost through political upheaval, or be carried into a new country. Vassanji also relates the book’s concern with departure to his own experience of leaving Tanzania. He initially expected to return, but as family and friends dispersed, he came to feel that he no longer had a home there. In the interview, he describes home as plural: East Africa, Toronto and, more distantly, India.
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These are Vassanji’s recollections and the interview’s account of his literary concerns. They should not be confused with the fictional history of Nurul Islam, or with a claim that Vassanji personally experienced Partition.
What the novel explores beyond its central question
The interview frames Everything There Is as a novel about intersecting lives and histories, not just science and religion. Its themes include love and betrayal, family and ageing, displacement and belonging, as well as inherited memory. The idea that scientific work crosses national borders also gives the book a universalist dimension: scientific inquiry can belong to a wider human community even as the people who pursue it are shaped by particular homes, histories and loyalties.
Vassanji also acknowledges the freedom fiction takes with historical material. He speculates that Salam and physicist Homi Bhabha may have crossed paths, while saying he does not know whether they did. That uncertainty should remain uncertainty; the interview does not establish a meeting. Likewise, a line in the novel about an “Islamic bomb” is fictional dialogue, not a verified quotation from Salam.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Fiction inspired by a real life is not a biography
| Reading it as fiction | Reading it as biography |
|---|---|
| Nurul Islam is an invented character whose life resembles aspects of Salam’s, as described by Vassanji in the Scroll interview. | The interview does not establish that the character’s experiences or dialogue are factual accounts of Salam’s life. |
| The novel uses imaginative scenes to explore science, faith, Partition, memory and belonging. | Historical claims about Salam require independent biographical evidence; the interview is not a substitute for it. |
Scroll’s interview reports that Salam became the first Muslim to receive the Nobel Prize in Physics, in 1979. That biographical detail is reported here as the interview’s statement, rather than expanded into a broader account of Salam’s career.
Why this story matters to Vassanji
Vassanji’s explanation brings together two kinds of distance: the gap between scientific explanation and religious devotion, and the distance created when people are separated from a home or from one another. Fiction lets him approach both without pretending to supply a definitive answer. Salam provides the point of departure; Nurul Islam gives Vassanji room to imagine how a life might hold apparently opposing ideas, while the novel’s family histories and migrations give those ideas a lived setting.
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