Author Series 28 - Anita Desai

Author Series 28 - Anita Desai

Anita Desai, original name Anita Mazumdar, (born June 24, 1937, Mussoorie , India) English-language Indian novelist and author of children’s books who excelled in evoking character and mood through visual images ranging from the meteorologic to the botanical.

Desai published her first short story when she was only twenty tears old. Her first novel was Cry, the Peacock (1963). Her other novels include: Voices in the City (1965), Bye-Bye, Blackbird (1971), Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), Fire on the Mountain (1977), Clear Light of Day (1980), In Custody (1984), Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988), and The Zigzag Way (2004)

Voices in the City is based on the life of the middle class intellectuals of Calcutta. It is an unforgettable story of a Bohemian brother and his two sisters caught in the crosscurrents of changing social values. In many ways the story reflects a vivid picture of India's social transition - a phase in which the older elements are not altogether dead, and the emergent ones not fully evolved. 

          The novel describes the bitter effects of the urban living upon an Indian family. Brought up in luxury and magnificence by an over indulgent mother, Nirode settles down in Calcutta and becomes engrossed in its bohemian life, while his elder sister, Monisha lives out a servile existence within the rigid and stiff confines of a traditional Hindu family. Amla sees the city as a monster, Nirode sacrifices everything for his career, and Monisha cannot bear her stifling existence in the household of a wealthy old Calcutta family.

The Zigzag Way is a 2004 novel by Anita Desai. The novel is about an American academic and writer who goes with his girlfriend to Mexico and rediscovers his passion for fiction writing.

        Eric, a young American historian, has come to Mexico on his first trip abroad. His search for his immigrant family’s roots brings him to a town in the Sierrra Madre, where a hundred years earlier Cornish miners toiled without relief. Here the suspiciously enigmatic Dona Vera, the fierce Austrian widow of a mining baron, has become a local legend, but her reputation for philanthropy glosses over a darker history. A haunting, powerful novel that culminates on the Day of the Dead, The Zigzag Way examines the subtle interplay between past and present.