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.

• Anita Desai Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin

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