"When I was very young, I used to share much of what I wrote with my family, but as I got older and more self-conscious, it became a much more private process." -- Anita Desai
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, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, in 1978 for her novel, "Fire on the Mountain" , by the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters .
"Ever since I could first write I have been doing so. When I was taught how to write and read at school, I made up my mind that this was what I love to do best and this was the world I was going to occupy.""I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.""I try to trace the connection between the characters and that way a story or plot emerges.""India is a curious place that still preserves the past, religions, and its history. No matter how modern India becomes, it is still very much an old country.""Many characters in the novel are representative of types that exist in India. He represents the caste system in India with an air of superiority, the caste system in India and the people thinking that western things are better.""My style of writing is to allow the story to unfold on its own. I try not to structure my work too rigidly.""People think that because I write about India I must be trying to portray India in a way.""Someone who wants to write should make an effort to write a little something every day. Writing in this sense is the same as athletes who practice a sport every day to keep their skills honed.""The book begins and ends with the visits to give the impression of a tunnel into their ancestors and family history. I believe in going backwards into the past - I felt I was digging a tunnel back to the past.""Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book."
Born as Anita Mazumdar to a German mother, Toni Nime, and a Bengali businessman, D. N. Mazumdar 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" 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 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". 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 .
Desai published her first novel, Cry The Peacock, in 1963. 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 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 LitWeb.net. Her latest novel, The Zigzag Way (2004), is set in 20th-century Mexico.
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 University. In addition, she writes for the New York Review of Books.
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 Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.