Anita Desai

Indian novelist (born 1937)

Anita Desai

FRSL

Born| Anita Mazumdar
(1937-06-24) 24 June 1937 (age 86)
Mussoorie, Princely State of Tehri Garhwal, British India (present-day Uttarakhand, India)
Occupation| Writer, professor
Nationality| Indian
Alma mater| University of Delhi
Period| 1963–present
Genre| Fiction
Notable works| In Custody; Baumgartner's Bombay
Spouse| Ashvin Desai
Children| 4, including Kiran Desai

Anita Desai FRSL, born Anita Mazumdar (born 24 June 1937), is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times.[2][3] She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters.[4] She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983).[5] Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London.[6]

## Early life[edit]

Desai was born in 1937 in Mussoorie, India, to a German immigrant mother, Toni Nime, and a Bengali businessman, D. N. Mazumdar.[7][1] Her Bengali father first met her German mother while he was an engineering student in pre-war Berlin; and they got married during a period when it was still unusual for an Indian man to marry a European woman. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to New Delhi, where Desai was raised with her two elder sisters and brother.[8][9]

She grew up speaking Hindi with her neighbours, and only German at her home. She also spoke Bengali, Urdu and English out of her house. She first learned to read and write in English at school and as a result, English became her "literary language". She began to write in English at the age of seven and published her first story at the age of nine.[7]

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 Miranda House of the University of Delhi. The following year she married Ashvin Desai, the director of a computer software company and author of the book Between Eternities: Ideas on Life and The Cosmos.[10][11]

They have four children, including Booker Prize-winning novelist Kiran Desai. Her children were taken to Thul (near Alibagh) for weekends, where Desai set her novel The Village by the Sea.[12][7] For that work she won the 1983 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.[5]

## Career[edit]

Desai published her first novel, Cry The Peacock, in 1963. In 1958 she collaborated with P. Lal and founded the publishing firm Writers Workshop. 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.[13]

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.[14]

The 1999 Booker Prize finalist novel Fasting, Feasting increased her popularity. Her novel The Zigzag Way, set in 20th-century Mexico, appeared in 2004 and her latest collection of short stories, The Artist of Disappearance, was published in 2011.[15]

Desai has taught at Mount Holyoke College, Baruch 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 (to which she dedicated Baumgartner's Bombay).[16]

## Film[edit]

In 1993, her novel In Custody was adapted by Merchant Ivory Productions into an English film by the same name, directed by Ismail Merchant, with a screenplay by Shahrukh Husain. It won the 1994 President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture and stars Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.[17]

## Awards[edit]

* 1978 – Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize – Fire on the Mountain
* 1978 – Sahitya Akademi Award (National Academy of Letters Award) – Fire on the Mountain
* 1980 – Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction – Clear Light of Day[3]
* 1983 – Guardian Children's Fiction Prize – The Village by the Sea: an Indian family story[5]
* 1984 – Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction – In Custody[3]
* 1993 – Neil Gunn Prize
* 1999 – Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction: Fasting, Feasting[3]
* 2000 – Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)
* 2003 – Benson Medal of Royal Society of Literature
* 2007 – Sahitya Akademi Fellowship[18]
* 2014 – Padma Bhushan[1]

## Selected works[edit]

* Cry, The Peacock (1963)[1] Orient Paperbacks ISBN 978-81-222008-5-0
* Voices in the City (1965), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222005-3-9
* Bye-bye Blackbird (1971), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222002-9-4
* The Peacock Garden (1974), Mammoth Books, ISBN 978-07-497059-2-3
* Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), Orient Paperbacks, ISBN 978-81-222008-8-1
* Cat on a Houseboat (1976), Orient Longman, ISBN 978-08-612502-8-8
* Fire on the Mountain (1977), Random House India, ISBN 978-81-840005-7-3
* Games at Twilight (1978), Vintage Publishing, ISBN 978-00-994285-3-4
* Clear Light of Day (1980), Random House India, ISBN 978-81-840001-5-3
* The Village by the Sea (1982), Penguin India, ISBN 978-01-433354-9-8
* In Custody (1984)[19]
* Baumgartner's Bombay (1988)
* Journey to Ithaca (1995), Random House India, ISBN 978-81-840007-7-1
* Scholar and Gipsey (1996), Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 978-18-579976-5-1
* Fasting, Feasting (1999), Random House India, ISBN 978-81-840005-8-0
* Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000), Vintage Books
* The Zigzag Way (2004), Random House India, ISBN 978-81-840007-6-4
* The Artist of Disappearance (2011), Mariner Books, ISBN 978-05-478401-2-3

## See also[edit]

Portals:

* Novels
* Children's literature
* India

* Indian English literature
* List of Indian writers

## References[edit]

1. ^ a b c d "Anita Desai- she also has a cousin named Josefina Wickham, that was born in 2005. Biography". British Council. Chatto & Windus. Retrieved 29 April 2018.
2. ^ Sethi, Sunil (15 November 1984). "Book review: Anita Desai's 'In Custody'". India Today. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
3. ^ a b c d "Booker prize winners, shortlists and judges". The Guardian. 10 October 2008. Retrieved 5 October 2021.
4. ^ "Sahitya Akademi Award – English (Official listings)". Sahitya Akademi. Archived from the original on 31 March 2009.
5. ^ a b c "Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners", guardian.co.uk, 12 March 2001; retrieved 5 August 2012.
6. ^ Sethi, Sunil (30 November 2013). "Clear Light of Day is about time as a destroyer, as a preserver: Anita Desai". India Today. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
7. ^ a b c Liukkonen, Petri. "Anita Desai". Books and Writers. Finland: Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived from the original on 14 October 2004.
8. ^ "Revisiting Anita Desai". www.rediff.com. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
9. ^ Guardian Staff (19 June 1999). "A passage from India". The Guardian. Retrieved 21 November 2020.
10. ^ "After Anita, Kiran; Ashvin Desai goes the write way". News18. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
11. ^ "Author Ashvin Desai loses war with cancer". Zee News. 12 October 2008. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
12. ^ Dr. Kajal Thakur (12 May 2015). Man-Woman Bonding In Socio-Cultural Indian Concept. Lulu.com. pp. 9–. ISBN 978-1-329-13103-3.[self-published source]
13. ^ Elizabeth Ostberg. "Notes on the Biography of Anita Desani" Archived 20 January 2007 at the Wayback Machine
14. ^ "LitWeb.net". Archived from the original on 6 October 2006. Retrieved 27 December 2006.[page needed]
15. ^ "A Page in the Life: Anita Desai". Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved 24 March 2018.
16. ^ Baumgartner's Bombay, Penguin, 1989.
17. ^ "'Shayari koi mardon ki jaageer nahi': Shabana Azmi gets nostalgic as cult film In Custody completes 25 years". The Statesman. 16 April 2019. Retrieved 1 December 2020.
18. ^ "Conferment of Sahitya Akademi Fellowship". Official listings, Sahitya Akademi website. Archived from the original on 1 July 2017. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
19. ^ "In Custody by Anita Desai". Purple Pencil Project. 25 May 2020. Retrieved 9 June 2020.

## Sources[edit]

* 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.
* Nawale, Arvind M. (ed.). "Anita Desai's Fiction: Themes and Techniques". New Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 2011.

## External links[edit]

Wikiquote has quotations related to Anita Desai.

* Anita Desai at British Council: Literature
* Anita Desai discusses Fasting, Feasting on the BBC World Book Club
* Voices from the Gaps
* SAWNET bio
* MIT page
* Revisiting Anita Desai's "In Custody" for the Agrégation-Relire "Un héritage exorbitant" d'A. Desai
* Anita Desai at IMDb

Interviews

* Jabberwock: a conversation with Anita Desai
* ""You Turn Yourself into an Outsider": An interview with Anita Desai". Sampsonia Way Magazine. 14 January 2014.

Papers

* Anita Desai Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
* Books written by Anita Desai

* v
* t
* e

Novels by Anita Desai

* Cry, The Peacock (1963)
* Voices in the City (1965)
* Bye-bye Blackbird (1971)
* The Peacock Garden (1974)
* Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975)
* Cat on a Houseboat (1976)
* Fire on the Mountain (1977)
* Games at Twilight (1978)
* Clear Light of Day (1980)
* The Village By The Sea (1982)
* In Custody (1984)
* Baumgartner's Bombay (1988)
* Journey to Ithaca (1995)
* Fasting, Feasting (1999)
* Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000)
* The Zigzag Way (2004)
* The Artist of Disappearance (2011)

* v
* t
* e

Padma Bhushan award recipients (2010–2019)

2010|

* Satya Paul Agarwal
* Mohammad Amin
* Sailesh Kumar Bandopadhyay
* M. S. Banga
* Anil Bordia
* Bipan Chandra
* B. K. Chaturvedi
* Sant Singh Chatwal
* G. P. Chopra
* Tan Chung
* Madhusudan Dhaky
* P. R. Dubhashi
* Puttaraj Gawai
* Belle Monappa Hegde
* Ilaiyaraaja
* Jagdish Chandra Kapur
* Shrinivas Khale
* Aamir Khan
* Sultan Khan
* Ram Kumar
* Kumudini Lakhia
* Kuzhur Narayana Marar
* Chhannulal Mishra
* Eledath Thaikkattu Narayanan Mooss
* C. P. Krishnan Nair
* S. P. Oswal
* Akbar Padamsee
* Ramakanta Panda
* Balasaheb Vikhe Patil
* Arogyaswami Paulraj
* A. R. Rahman
* Moosa Raza
* Mallika Sarabhai
* Nookala Chinna Satyanarayana
* Abhijit Sen
* Satya Vrat Shastri
* Noshir M. Shroff
* Kushal Pal Singh
* Bikash Sinha
* Balagangadharanatha Swamiji
* Narayanan Vaghul
* P. K. Warrier
* Fareed Zakaria

2011|

* S. P. Balasubrahmanyam
* Rajashree Birla
* M. N. Buch
* C. V. Chandrasekhar
* Ajai Chowdhry
* Yogesh Chander Deveshwar
* Satyadev Dubey
* T. J. S. George
* Shankha Ghosh
* Kris Gopalakrishnan
* Keki Byramjee Grant
* Shashi Kapoor
* Krishen Khanna
* Khayyam
* Chanda Kochhar
* Dwijen Mukhopadhyay
* Madavoor Vasudevan Nair
* Ramdas Pai
* Dashrath Patel
* Rajendra Singh Pawar
* Suryanarayanan Ramachandran
* Shobhana Ranade
* Gunupati Venkata Krishna Reddy
* Kallam Anji Reddy
* Waheeda Rehman
* Shyam Saran
* Analjit Singh
* Arpita Singh
* Surendra Singh
* R. K. Srikantan
* Raghavan Thirumulpad

2012|

* Suresh H. Advani
* Shabana Azmi
* Homi K. Bhabha
* Shashikumar Chitre
* Khaled Choudhury
* Jatin Das
* Vidya Dehejia
* Dharmendra
* S. N. Goenka
* M. S. Gopalakrishnan
* T. V. Gopalakrishnan
* Buddhadev Das Gupta
* Sunil Janah
* Anish Kapoor
* S. B. Mujumdar
* B. Muthuraman
* Mira Nair
* Arvind Panagariya
* José Pereira
* Mata Prasad
* M. S. Raghunathan
* P. Chandrasekhara Rao
* Ronen Sen
* Devi Shetty
* M. V. Subbiah
* N. Vittal
* N. H. Wadia
* George Yeo

2013|

* Satya N. Atluri
* Maharaj Kishan Bhan
* Jaspal Bhatti
* Rahul Dravid
* Adi Godrej
* Abdul Rashid Khan
* Rajesh Khanna
* Mary Kom
* Nandkishore Shamrao Laud
* Mangesh Padgaonkar
* Hemendra Singh Panwar
* Jogesh Pati
* Shivajirao Girdhar Patil
* A. Sivathanu Pillai
* D. Ramanaidu
* Kanak Rele
* V. K. Saraswat
* Ashoke Sen
* Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
* B. N. Suresh
* Sharmila Tagore
* Ramamurthy Thyagarajan
* Saroja Vaidyanathan

2014|

* Anisuzzaman
* Mrityunjay Athreya
* Padmanabhan Balaram
* Dalveer Bhandari
* Ruskin Bond
* Anita Desai
* Pullela Gopichand
* Kamal Haasan
* Jyeshtharaj Joshi
* V. N. Kaul
* Neelam Kler
* M. Mahadevappa
* Leander Paes
* K. Radhakrishnan
* Anumolu Ramakrishna
* Thirumalachari Ramasami
* Lloyd Rudolph
* Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
* Vinod Prakash Sharma
* Gulam Mohammed Sheikh
* Parveen Sultana
* Dhirubhai Thaker
* Vairamuthu
* J. S. Verma
* T. H. Vinayakram

2015|

* Jahnu Barua
* Manjul Bhargava
* Vijay P. Bhatkar
* Swapan Dasgupta
* David Frawley
* Bill Gates
* Melinda French Gates
* Swami Satyamitranand
* N. Gopalaswami
* Subhash C. Kashyap
* Gokulotsavji Maharaj
* Saichiro Misumi
* Ambrish Mithal
* Sudha Ragunathan
* Harish Salve
* Ashok Seth
* Rajat Sharma
* Satpal Singh
* Shivakumara Swami
* Khadg Singh Valdiya

2016|

* Ravindra Chandra Bhargava
* Robert D. Blackwill
* Hafeez Contractor
* Indu Jain
* Heisnam Kanhailal
* Anupam Kher
* Sania Mirza
* Pallonji Mistry
* Udit Narayan
* Saina Nehwal
* Yarlagadda Lakshmi Prasad
* Vinod Rai
* N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya
* A. V. Rama Rao
* D. Nageshwara Reddy
* Dayananda Saraswati
* Barjinder Singh Hamdard
* Ram V. Sutar
* Tejomayananda

2017|

* Vishwa Mohan Bhatt
* Deviprasad Dwivedi
* Ratnasundarsuri
* Niranjanananda Saraswati
* Cho Ramaswamy
* Maha Chakri Sirindhorn
* Tehemton Erach Udwadia

2018|

* Pankaj Advani
* Philipose Mar Chrysostom
* Mahendra Singh Dhoni
* Alexander Kadakin
* Ramachandran Nagaswamy
* Laxman Pai
* Arvind Parikh
* Sharda Sinha

2019|

* John T. Chambers
* Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa
* Pravin Gordhan
* Dharampal Gulati
* Darshan Lal Jain
* Ashok Laxmanrao Kukade
* Kariya Munda
* Budhaditya Mukherjee
* Mohanlal
* Nambi Narayanan
* Kuldip Nayar
* Bachendri Pal
* V. K. Shunglu
* Hukmdev Narayan Yadav

# Posthumous conferral

* 1954–1959
* 1960–1969
* 1970–1979
* 1980–1989
* 1990–1999
* 2000–2009
* 2010–2019
* 2020–2029

* v
* t
* e

Sahitya Akademi Fellowship

1968–1980|

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1968)
D. R. Bendre, Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay, Sumitranandan Pant, C. Rajagopalachari (1969)
Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, Firaq Gorakhpuri, Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar, Viswanatha Satyanarayana (1970)
Kaka Kalelkar, Gopinath Kaviraj, Gurbaksh Singh, Kalindi Charan Panigrahi (1971)
Masti Venkatesha Iyengar, Mangharam Udharam Malkani, Nilmoni Phukan, Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, Sukumar Sen, V. R. Trivedi (1973)
T. P. Meenakshisundaram (1975)
Atmaram Ravaji Deshpande, Jainendra Kumar, Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa 'Kuvempu', V. Raghavan, Mahadevi Varma (1979)

1981–2000|

Umashankar Joshi, K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, K. Shivaram Karanth (1985)
Mulk Raj Anand, Vinayaka Krishna Gokak, Laxmanshastri Balaji Joshi, Amritlal Nagar, Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai, Annada Shankar Ray (1989)
Nagarjun, Balamani Amma, Ashapurna Devi, Qurratulain Hyder, Vishnu Bhikaji Kolte, Kanhu Charan Mohanty, P. T. Narasimhachar, R. K. Narayan, Harbhajan Singh (1994)
Jayakanthan, Vinda Karandikar, Vidya Niwas Mishra, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Raja Rao, Sachidananda Routray, Krishna Sobti (1996)
Syed Abdul Malik, K. S. Narasimhaswamy, Gunturu Seshendra Sarma, Rajendra Shah, Ram Vilas Sharma, N. Khelchandra Singh (1999)
Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar, Rehman Rahi (2000)

2001–present|

Ram Nath Shastri (2001)
Kaifi Azmi, Govind Chandra Pande, Nilamani Phookan, Bhisham Sahni (2002)
Kovilan, U. R. Ananthamurthy, Vijaydan Detha, Bhadriraju Krishnamurti, Amrita Pritam, Shankha Ghosh, Nirmal Verma (2004)
Manoj Das, Vishnu Prabhakar (2006)
Anita Desai, Kartar Singh Duggal, Ravindra Kelekar (2007)
Gopi Chand Narang, Ramakanta Rath (2009)
Chandranath Mishra Amar, Kunwar Narayan, Bholabhai Patel, Kedarnath Singh, Khushwant Singh (2010)
Raghuveer Chaudhari, Arjan Hasid, Sitakant Mahapatra, M. T. Vasudevan Nair, Asit Rai, Satya Vrat Shastri (2013)
Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa, C. Narayana Reddy (2014)
Nirendranath Chakravarty, Gurdial Singh (2016)

Honorary Fellows|

Léopold Sédar Senghor (1974)
Edward C. Dimock, Jr., Daniel H. H. Ingalls Sr., Kamil Zvelebil, Ji Xianlin (1996)
Vassilis Vitsaxis, Eugene Chelyshev (2002)
Ronald E. Asher (2007)
Abhimanyu Unnuth (2013)

Premchand Fellowship|

Intizar Hussain (2005), Kishwar Naheed (2016)

Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship|

Senake Bandaranayake, Chie Nakane, Azad N. Shamatov (1996)

* v
* t
* e

Sahitya Akademi Award for English

1960–1970|

* The Guide by R. K. Narayan (1960)
* The Serpent and the Rope by Raja Rao (1964)
* The Tribal World of Verrier Elwin by Verrier Elwin (1965)
* Shadow From Ladakh by Bhabani Bhattacharya (1967)
* An Artist in Life by Niharranjan Ray (1969)

1971–1980|

* Morning Face by Mulk Raj Anand (1971)
* Scholar Extraordinary by Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1975)
* Jawaharlal Nehru by Sarvepalli Gopal (1976)
* Azadi by Chaman Nahal (1977)
* Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai (1978)
* Inside the Haveli by Rama Mehta (1979)
* On the Mother by K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar (1980)

1981–1990|

* Relationship by Jayanta Mahapatra (1981)
* The Last Labyrinth by Arun Joshi (1982)
* Latter-Day Psalms by Nissim Ezekiel (1983)
* The Keeper of the Dead by Keki N. Daruwalla (1984)
* Collected Poems by Kamala Das (1985)
* Rich Like Us by Nayantara Sahgal (1986)
* Trapfalls In the Sky by Shiv K. Kumar (1987)
* The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth (1988)
* The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh (1989)
* That Long Silence by Shashi Deshpande (1990)

1991–2000|

* The Trotter-Nama by Allan Sealy (1991)
* Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra by Ruskin Bond (1992)
* After Amnesia by G. N. Devy (1993)
* Serendip by Dom Moraes (1994)
* Memories of Rain by Sunetra Gupta (1996)
* Final Solutions and Other Plays by Mahesh Dattani (1998)
* The Collected Poems by A. K. Ramanujan (1999)
* Cuckold by Kiran Nagarkar (2000)

2001–2010|

* Rajaji: A Life by Rajmohan Gandhi (2001)
* A New World by Amit Chaudhuri (2002)
* The Perishable Empire by Meenakshi Mukherjee (2003)
* The Mammaries of the Welfare State by Upamanyu Chatterjee (2004)
* The Algebra of Infinite Justice by Arundhati Roy (2005)
* The Sari Shop by Rupa Bajwa (2006)
* Disorderly Women by Malathi Rao (2007)
* Mahabharata: An Inquiry into the Human Condition by Chaturvedi Badrinath (2009)
* The Book of Rachel by Esther David (2010)

2011–2020|

* India after Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha (2011)
* These Errors are Correct by Jeet Thayil (2012)
* Laburnum For My Head by Temsula Ao (2013)
* Trying to Say Goodbye by Adil Jussawalla (2014)
* Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer by Cyrus Mistry (2015)
* Em and the Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto (2016)
* The Black Hill by Mamang Dai (2017)
* The Blind Lady's Descendants by Anees Salim (2018)
* An Era of Darkness by Shashi Tharoor (2019)
* When God is a Traveller by Arundhathi Subramaniam (2020)

2021–present|

* Things to Leave Behind by Namita Gokhale (2021)
* All The Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy (2022)

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