Anita Desai and Her Fictional World

Anita Desai and Her Fictional World
Author: Neeru Tandon
Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Dist
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2008
Genre: Indic literature (English)
ISBN: 9788126908424

Today Anita Desai Is Recognised For Her Originality, Versatility And The Indigenous Flavour Of Her Character-Portrayal That She Brings To Her Work. Her Women Characters Are Real Flesh And Blood Protagonists Who Make You Look At Them With Awe And With Their Relationships To Their Surroundings, Their Society, Their Men, Their Children, Their Families, Their Mental And Psychological Make-Ups And Themselves. The Present Book Purports To Be A Pioneering Attempt To Evaluate Desai S Fiction And Fictional Art From Various Points Of View And Assesses Her Contribution To The Indian-English Fiction. What Is Unique About This Book Is The Attempt To Include Desai S Complete Fictional Oeuvre From Her Maiden Attempt Cry, The Peacock (1963) Till Her Latest Published Work The Zigzag Way (2004). Her Novels Of Four Decades Have Been Divided Into Different Sections For A Focused Study.The Present Critical Anthology Of Dr. Neeru Tandon On Anita Desai Is An Admirable Effort On The Presentation Of A Coherent And Comprehensive Assessment Of Anita Desai As A Powerful Indian English Fiction Writer. In Her Collection She Has Included Certain Burning Topics Of The Day Such As Male-Female Dichotomy, Existentialist Vision, Religion And Culture, Concept Of Marriage And Narrative Technique In The Fiction Of Anita Desai. The Uncomplicated Language And The Natural Flow Of Words Make For Easy Reading. Since Dasai Is Prescribed In The Syllabus In Most Of The Universities Of India, Both The Teachers And The Students Will Find This Book Extremely Useful, And The Research Scholars Will Also Find It Very Interesting And Purposeful.

In Custody

In Custody
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Random House India
Total Pages: 190
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8184003293

In this sensitive portrayal of human nature, Anita Desai, one of India’s foremost writers, paints an intimate portrait of lives impacted by the quest for identity and purpose. Deven, a Hindi lecturer in small-town Mirpore, lives a humdrum existence. A chance to interview Nur—India’s greatest living Urdu poet—offers him an escape from his dreary life. But the Nur he meets is an enfeebled man, surrounded by clashing wives and preying sycophants. Deven’s decision to be the custodian of Nur’s verse gives birth to an unusual alliance between the two. Stimulating and thought provoking, In Custody is a brilliant parable lamenting the gradual corrosion of culture and tradition in the face of modernity, and a dazzling study of the complexity of human relationships.

Voices in the City

Voices in the City
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Orient Paperbacks
Total Pages: 250
Release: 1965
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8122200532

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 cross-currents 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.

Cry, the Peacock

Cry, the Peacock
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Orient Paperbacks
Total Pages: 204
Release: 1980
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8122200850

This book is the story of a young girl obsessed by a childhood prophecy of disaster. The author builds up an atmosphere of tension and oppression, in the middle of an Indian summer.

Fire on the Mountain

Fire on the Mountain
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Random House India
Total Pages: 148
Release: 2012-09-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8184003269

Gone are the days when Nanda Kaul watched over her family and played the part of Vice-Chancellor’s wife. Leaving her children behind in the real world, the busier world, she has chosen to spend her last years alone in the mountains in Kasauli, in a secluded bungalow called Carignano. Until one summer her great-granddaughter Raka is dispatched to Kasauli – and everything changes. Nanda is at first dismayed at this break in her preciously acquired solitude. Fiercely taciturn, Raka is, like her, quite untamed. The girl prefers the company of apricot trees and animals to her great-grandmother’s, and spends her afternoons rambling over the mountainside. But the two are more alike than they know. Throughout the hot, long summer, Nanda’s old, hidden dependencies and wounds come to the surface, ending, inevitably, in tragedy. Marvellous yet restrained, Fire on the Mountain speaks of the past and its unshakable hold over the present.

The Zigzag Way

The Zigzag Way
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2004
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780618042159

"The zigzag paths of these characters converge on the Day of the Dead, bringing together past and present in a moment of powerful epiphany."--BOOK JACKET.

Bye-Bye Blackbird

Bye-Bye Blackbird
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Orient Paperbacks
Total Pages: 251
Release:
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 8122207057

Written in vivid narrative and chiselled prose, Bye-Bye Blackbird explores the lives of the outsiders seeking to forge a new identity in an alien society. Set against England's green and grisly landscape, enigmatic and attractive to some, depressing and nauseating to others, it is a story of everyday heroism against subtle oppression, crumbling traditions and homesickness. 'Characters grow with life, the scenes are delicately painted and the nuances of changing mood skilfully transmitted.' — Hindu 'More than a novel, it is a psychological study of the love-hate relationship the immigrants have towards their country of adoption.' — Indian Express

Fasting, Feasting

Fasting, Feasting
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2012-10-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1448104556

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 1999 BOOKER PRIZE Uma, the plain, spinster daughter of a close-knit Indian family, is trapped at home, smothered by her overbearing parents and their traditions, unlike her ambitious younger sister Aruna, who brings off a 'good' marriage, and brother Arun, the disappointing son and heir who is studying in America. Across the world in Massachusetts, life with the Patton family is bewildering for Arun in the alien culture of freedom, freezers and paradoxically self-denying self-indulgence.

The Artist of Disappearance

The Artist of Disappearance
Author: Anita Desai
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 181
Release: 2011
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0547577451

Award-winning novelist Anita Desai explores time and transformation in these three artful novellas