Literature: Anita Desai

Anita Desai

Anita Desai was born in 1937, in Mussoorie, India; her father was Bengali and mother German. She was educated in Delhi where she received an AB in English Literature from the University of Delhi. Her published works include short stories, children's books, and eight novels. Two of the novels, Clear Light of Day (1980) and In Custody (1984), were short-listed for the Booker Prize. She received the Guardian Award for Children's Fiction for the novel, The Village by the Sea (1982), and the 1978 National Academy of Letters Award for Fire on the Mountain (1977).

Anita Desai is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in London and she has been a member of the Advisory Board for English of the National Academy of Letters in Delhi and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has been Visiting Fellow at Girton College, Cambridge, in England, and has taught writing at Smith College and has been the Purington Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College in the United States. She is married and has four children.

Anita Desai recently joined the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies in MIT's first professorial appointment primarily in fiction writing in more than 20 years.

Published Works:

1965: Voices in the City
1971: Bye-Bye, Blackbird
1977: Fire on the Mountain
1978: Games at Twilight
1978: Where Shall we go this summer?
1979: The Peacock Garden
1980: Clear Light of Day
1982: The Village by the Sea
1983: Cry, the Peacock
1984: In Custody
1988: Baumgartner's Bombay
1995: Journey to Ithaca
1999: Fasting, Feasting
2000: Diamond Dust: Stories