Anita Desai

Infobox Writer


imagesize = 150px
name = Anita Desai
caption =
pseudonym =
birthname =Anita Mazumdar
birthdate = birth date and age|1937|6|24|mf=y
birthplace = Mussoorie, India
occupation = Author
nationality = Indian
period = 1970s—present
genre =Fiction
subject =
movement =
notableworks =
influences ="Fire on the Mountain,"Clear Light of Day, In Custody, and Fasting, Feasting"
influenced = Kiran Desai
website =

Anita Mazumdar Desai (born June 24, 1937) is an Indian novelist and Emeritus John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, won the 2006 Booker prize.

Background

Born as Anita Mazumdar to a German mother, Toni Nime, and a Bengali businessman, D. N. Mazumdar [ [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/desai.htm Anita Desai ] ] in Mussoorie, India. She grew up speaking German at home and Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English outside the house. She first learned to read and write in English at school and as a result it became her "literary language" [ [http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/india/desai/desaibio.html A Brief Biography of Anita Desai ] ] . Despite German being her first language she did not visit Germany until later in life as an adult.

She was a student at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School in Delhi and received her B.A. in English literature in 1957 from the University of Delhi Miranda House. The following year she married Ashvin Desai, a businessman. They raised four children. Her daughter Kiran was born in Chandigarh and spent her childhood years in Bombay, on Alatamont Road. Kiran Desai is also the author of quite a few books including her first one "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard" She recalls that as children they were taken to Thal (near Alibaug) for weekends, and this is where Anita Desai set her novel "Village by the Sea" [ [http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/desai.htm Anita Desai ] ] .

Career

She published her first novel in 1963, "Cry The Peacock". She considers "Clear Light Of Day" (1980) her most autobiographical work as it is set during her coming of age and also in the same neighborhood in which she grew up [ [http://www.haverford.edu/engl/engl277b/Contexts/anita_desai.htm Anita Desai-A Critical Biography ] ] . In 1984 she published "In Custody" - about an Urdu poet in his declining days - which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 1993 she became a creative writing teacher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology [ [http://www.litweb.net/biogs/desai_anita.html LitWeb.net ] ] ). Her latest novel published in 2004, "The Zigzag Way", is set in 20th-century Mexico.

Desai has taught at Mount Holyoke College and Smith College. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and of Girton College, Cambridge University. In addition, she writes for the New York Review of Books.

Film

In 1993 Merchant Ivory Productions released "In Custody", directed by Ismail Merchant, with a screenplay by Shahrukh Husain. It won the 1994 President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture and stars the noted actors Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.

Awards

* 1978 - National Academy of Letters Award - "Fire on the Mountain"
* 1978 - Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize - "Fire on the Mountain"
* 1980 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - "Clear Light of Day"
* 1983 - Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - "The Village By The Sea"
* 1984 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - "In Custody"
* 1993 - Neil Gunn Prize
* 1999 - Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction: "Fasting, Feasting"
* 2000 -Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)

Selected works

* "The Zigzag Way" (2004)
* "Diamond Dust and Other Stories" (2000)
* "Fasting, Feasting" (1999)
* "Journey to Ithaca" (1995)
* "Baumgartner's Bombay" (1988)
* "In Custody" (1984)
* "The Village By The Sea" (1982)
* "Clear Light of Day" (1980)
* "Games at Twilight" (1978)
* "Fire on the Mountain" (1977)
* "Cry, The Peacock" (1963)

ee also

* Indian English literature
* List of winners and shortlisted authors of the Booker Prize for Fiction

References

* Abrams, M. H and Stephen Greenblatt. "Anita Desai." "The Norton Anthology of English Literature," Vol. 2C, 7th Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000: 2768 - 2785.
* Alter, Stephen and Wimal Dissanayake. "A Devoted Son by Anita Desai." "The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories." New Delhi, Middlesex, New York: Penguin Books, 1991: 92-101.
* Gupta, Indra. "India’s 50 Most Illustrious Women". (ISBN 81-88086-19-3)
* Selvadurai, Shyam (ed.). "Anita Desai:Winterscape." "Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction." New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005:69-90.

External links

* [http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth124 Bio]
* [http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/desai_anita.html Voices from the Gaps]
* [http://www.sawnet.org/books/authors.php?Desai+Anita SAWNET bio]
* [http://www.mit.edu/~humanistic/faculty/desai.html MIT page]
* [http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2007/12/conversation-with-anita-desai-and-some.html Jabberwock: a conversation with Anita Desai]
*

Papers

* [http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/desai.html Anita Desai Collection] at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin