Anita Desai

Anita Desai

BornAnita Mazumdar
(1937-06-24) 24 June 1937 (age 87)
Mussoorie, Princely State of Tehri Garhwal, British India (present-day Uttarakhand, India)
OccupationWriter, professor
NationalityIndian
Alma materUniversity of Delhi
Period1963–present
GenreFiction
Notable worksIn Custody; Baumgartner's Bombay
SpouseAshvin Desai
Children4, including Kiran Desai

Anita Desai FRSL (born Anita Mazumdar; 24 June 1937), is an Indian novelist and Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times.[2][3] She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature.[4] She won the 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] Since 2020 she has been a Companion of Literature.

  1. ^ "Anita Desai-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. ^ "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. ^ "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.