Desai, Anita (1937-…), is an Indian novelist who writes in English. Many of her novels deal with the emotional pressures on Indian women trying to express their independence. Desai also writes about family relationships and Indian society since the country’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947. Her other concerns include the conflicts between Eastern and Western cultures and between generations. Desai has received praise in particular for her expert use of descriptive detail in portraying the atmosphere and landscapes of India.
Desai’s first novel, Cry, the Peacock (1963), and her fourth novel, Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), both examine the lives of women at odds with their roles in Indian society. Much of Desai’s fiction concerns the effect of modern Indian life on individual characters. Her characters are often sharply satirical.
Another major theme in Desai’s work is the meeting of Indian and European cultures in the modern world. Baumgartner’s Bombay (1989) is the story of a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany who settles in India. Journey to Ithaca (1995) tells of a European couple who travel through India. The husband’s spiritual search leads him to a guru (teacher), and his wife attempts to understand his search. Desai’s other novels include Voices in the City (1965), Bye-Bye Blackbird (1968), Fire on the Mountain (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980), and In Custody (1985). Her short stories were collected in Games at Twilight (1978). Desai has also written fiction for children, including The Village by the Sea (1982), which won the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize, one of the United Kingdom’s top awards for children’s literature, in 1983.
Anita Mazumdar was born on June 24, 1937, in Mussoorie, in what is now Uttarakhand. Her father was Bengali, and her mother was German. Desai earned a B.A. degree in English literature from Delhi University in 1957. She married Ashvin Desai, an Indian businessman, in 1958. She has been a professor of English at Mount Holyoke College and a professor of creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, both in the United States. Kiran Desai, Anita’s daughter, won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, the United Kingdom’s best-known literary award, for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. Anita Desai has had three books reach the short list for the prize, a list of up to six titles from which the judges select the winner, but she has never won.
