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Rosarita (Hardcover)
Anita Desai
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R389
R313
Discovery Miles 3 130
Save R76 (20%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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From three times Booker-shortlisted author Anita Desai, Rosarita is a
beautiful, haunting novel that explores memory, grief, and a young
woman’s determination to forge her own path.
A young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita
is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone,
somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.
And then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita
because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same
journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my
mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange
woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and
her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past
threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.
Winner of the 1982 Guardian Award for children's fiction, The
Village by the Sea is a survival story by the novelist Anita Desai.
Set in a small fishing villlage near Bombay, Lila and Hari, aged 13
and 12, struggle to keep the family, including two young sisters,
going when their mother is ill and their father usually the worse
for drink. When Hari goes to Bombay to find work, Lila seems to be
responsible for everything. Although the book paints a picture of
extreme poverty, it demonstrates the strength of the family even in
the most extreme circumstances and offers a powerful picture of
another culture.
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.
Two poets, a playwright and a novelist - Michael Longley, Eavan
Boland, Frank McGuiness and Anita Desai - explore in these essays
aspects of the imaginative process as each has experienced it: four
major writers, four sensibilities, four ways of seeing creativity
and its contexts. MICHAEL LONGLEY writes with remarkable candour of
his years - 1970 to 1991 - as arts administrator in Northern
Ireland. Transforming anecdote into parable, this noted poet
measures the cost of 'trying to remain true to yourself facing the
"dark tower"' while being part of an essential but often
soul-destroying bureaucracy. EAVAN BOLAND, merging the personal and
the theoretical, contends that the place of women as writers in
Irish society have been shaped by a ' fusion of the national and
the feminine'. FRANK MCGUINESS, the internationally acclaimed
playwright, offers a radically innovative reading of Oscar Wilde's
De Profundis, while calling into being the material contexts of
creativity - in this instance, a prison cell. The Indian novelist
ANITA DESAI looks at her country's colonial heritage and a shared
background that gave rise to the work of Nobel Laureate
Rabindranath Tagore and the film-maker Satyajit Ray. Her
fascinating lecture shows how a vibrant indigenous culture, coming
into fruitful contact with the West at the end of the nineteenth
century, blossomed into artistic creation - yielding parallels with
Ireland.
Nanda Kaul is old. She has chosen to spend her last years high up
in the mountains where she can arrange her thoughts into
tranquility. But her solitude is broken when her fragile and
secretive great-grand-daughter, Raka, comes to stay. It is an
intrusion Nanda Kaul deeply resents, but this child has a capacity
to change things. Through the long hot summer months hidden
dependencies and old wounds are uncovered, until tragedy seems as
inevitable as a forest fire on the hillsides surrounding the villa.
A stunning new collection of short stories about motherhood,
selected and introduced by Candice Brathwaite. ______________ 'To
describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its
perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colours of a rainbow' MAYA
ANGELOU The story of motherhood is an endlessly rich one: it's one
of love - and all the highs and lows that come with that
world-turning emotion - and, in the purest sense, of life itself.
Within these pages, some of the finest writers in the world explore
motherhood in wildly varying modes, from single parenthood to
sisters coparenting, from the deepest hardships to the biggest
celebrations. Selected and introduced by Candice Brathwaite, author
of I Am Not Your Baby Mother. Stories by Lydia Davis, Anita Desai,
Mary Gaitskill, Tessa Hadley, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison, Ngugi
wa Thiong'o, Irenosen Okojie, Casey Plett, Tabitha Siklos, Helen
Simpson, Ali Smith
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The Home and the World (Paperback, Revised)
Rabindranath Tagore; Edited by William Radice; Introduction by Anita Desai; Translated by Surendranath Tagore
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R337
R273
Discovery Miles 2 730
Save R64 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Set on a Bengali noble's estate in 1908, this is both a love story
and a novel of political awakening. The central character, Bimala,
is torn between the duties owed to her husband, Nikhil, and the
demands made on her by the radical leader, Sandip. Her attempts to
resolve the irreconciliable pressures of the home and world reflect
the conflict in India itself, and the tragic outcome foreshadows
the unrest that accompanied Partition in 1947.
By the author of Black Narcissus and The River 'One of our best and
most captivating novelists' Philip Hensher 'Her craftsmanship is
always sure; her understanding of character is compassionate and
profound; her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty' New York
Times In a crumbling Calcutta mansion, with faded frescos and a
jasmine-covered garden, the Lemarchant family live, clinging to the
fringes of respectability: neither Indian nor English, they are
accepted by no one and exploited by all. After only a day in India,
Stephen Bright meets Rosa Lemarchant. In an ill-fitting dress once
belonging to her sister, she is awkward and shy, and couldn't be
more different from the stories he has heard of fast 'Eurasian'
girls. Ignorant of Calcutta's strict codes of conformity, he falls
in love with Rosa and becomes enchanted by the building in which
she lives, determined to uncover its secrets. Mystery pervades this
story of a memory-haunted house in old Calcutta, as secret as a
sundial in a ruined garden.
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK** Discover the
classic, Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel from one of India's
finest ever writers. To the family living in the shabby, dusty
house in Delhi, Tara's visit brings a sharp reminder of life
outside tradition. For Bim, coping endlessly with their problems,
there is a renewal of the old jealousies for, unlike her sister,
she has failed to escape. Looking at both the cruelty and the
beauty of family life and the harshness of India's modern history,
Clear Light of Day brilliantly evokes the painful process of
confronting and healing old wounds. 'Clear Light of Day does what
only the best novels can do; it totally submerges us.' Anne Tyler
Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction
"The excellent strength the novellas] share is a gracefulness and
dreamlike sonority, reminiscent of writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and
W.G. Sebald, wherein strange evolutions of solitary lives are the
rule, and readers are held by the stately, hypnotic dignity of the
voice that tells them." - "San Francisco Chronicle"
Set in modern India, these three novellas move beyond the cities
to places still haunted by the past, and to characters who are,
each in their own way, masters of self-effacement. An unnamed
government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of
forgotten treasures where he discovers a surprise "relic." A
translator blurs the line between writer and translator, and in so
doing risks unraveling her desires and achievements. In the title
novella, a hermit hidden away in the woods with a secret is
discovered by a film crew, which compels him to withdraw even
further until he magically disappears . . .
Rich and evocative, remarkable in their clarity and sensuous in
their telling, these novellas remind us of the extraordinary yet
delicate power of this pre-eminent writer.
"Desai, at her best, offers enchanting, subtle, and deeply
observed portraits of layered characters trapped between worlds." -
"Daily Beast"
"Lingers in the memory the same way these landscapes and people of
India prove impossible to forget." - "Boston Globe "
Set in contemporary Bombay and other cities, these stories reflect the kaleidoscope of urban life - evoking the colour, sounds and white-hot heat of the city. Warm, perceptive, humorous and touched with sadness, Anita Desai's stories are peopled with intensely individual characters - the man spiritually transformed by the surface texture of a melon; the American wife who, homesick for the verdant farmlands of Vermont, turns to the hippies in the Indian hills; the painter living in a slum who fills his canvasses with flowers, birds and landscapes he has never seen.
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Zigzag Way (Paperback)
Anita Desai
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R394
R344
Discovery Miles 3 440
Save R50 (13%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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In The Zigzag Way, the critically acclaimed novelist Anita Desai
offers a gorgeously nuanced story of expatriates and travelers
adrift in an unfamiliar land. Eric, a young American historian, has
come to Mexico on his first trip abroad. His search for his
immigrant family's roots brings him to a town in the Sierrra Madre,
where a hundred years earlier Cornish miners toiled without relief.
Here the suspiciously enigmatic Dona Vera, the fierce Austrian
widow of a mining baron, has become a local legend, but her
reputation for philanthropy glosses over a darker history. A
haunting, powerful novel that culminates on the Day of the Dead,
The Zigzag Way examines the subtle interplay between past and
present.
Anita Desai is the author of many acclaimed works of fiction,
including Baumgartner's Bombay, Clear Light of Day, Diamond Dust,
and Fasting, Feasting, among other works. Three of her novels have
been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. A professor emeritus at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she now lives in New York.
Upon the recent publication of Fasting, Feasting, critics raved about Anita Desai: "Desai is more than smart; she's an undeniable genius" (Washington Post Book World). The Wall Street Journal called Fasting, Feasting "poignant, penetrating . . . a splendid novel, " while the Boston Globe celebrated Desai's "beautiful literary universe." Now, in this richly diverse collection, Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes, stretching from India to New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Skillfully navigating the fault lines between social obligation and personal loyalties, the men and women in these nine tales set out on journeys that suddenly go beyond the pale -- or surprisingly lead them back to where they started from. In the mischievous title story, a beloved dog brings nothing but disaster to his obsessed master; in other tales, old friendships and family ties stir up buried feelings, demanding either renewed commitment or escape. And in the final exquisite story, a young woman discovers a new kind of freedom in Delhi's rooftop community. With her trademark "perceptiveness, delicacy of language, and sharp wit" (Salman Rushdie) in full evidence here, Anita Desai once again gloriously confirms that she is "India's finest writer in English" (Independent).
A "beautifully written, richly textured, and haunting story" (Chaim Potok), BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany -- and his Jewish heritage -- for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny" (NEW LEADER), Desai's "capacious intelligence, her unsentimental compassion" (NEW REPUBLIC) reach their full height.
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In Custody (Paperback)
Anita Desai
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R277
R225
Discovery Miles 2 250
Save R52 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Asked to interview India's greatest poet, Nur, Deven sees a way to escape the miseries of life as a small-town scholar. But the old man he finds deep in the bazaars of Old Delhi bears no resemblance to the idol of his youth. Deven is fooled, bullied and cheated, and drawn into a new captivity.
The Complete Stories gathers together Anita Desai's short story
collections Diamond Dust and Games at Twilight and the novellas of
The Artist of Disappearance, with a new preface from the author.
From the icy suburbs of Canada to the overcrowded B&Bs of
Cornwall, via the hill towns and cities of India, Anita Desai
observes human behaviour unflinchingly but not unkindly,
recognising our ordinariness and our strangeness, and capturing
both with quiet precision.
A triptych of beautifully crafted novellas make up Anita Desai's
exquisite new book. Set in modern India, but where history still
casts a long shadow, the stories move beyond the cities to places
still haunted by the past, and to characters who are, each in their
own way, masters of self-effacement. Rich and evocative, remarkable
in their clarity and sensuous in their telling, these stories
remind us of the extraordinary yet delicate power of this
pre-eminent writer.
By the esteemed author of Black Narcissus. 'Her craftsmanship is
always sure; her understanding of character is compassionate and
profound; her prose is pure, delicate, and gently witty' New York
Times Harriet is caught between two worlds: her older sister is no
longer a playmate, her brother is still a little boy. And the
comforting rhythm of her Indian childhood - the sounds of the jute
factory, the colourful festivals that accompany each season and the
eternal ebb and flow of the river on its journey to the Bay of
Bengal - is about to be shattered by a tragic event. Intense,
vivid, and with a dark undertow, The River is a poignant portrait
of the loss of a young girl's innocence. 'The River will make you
laugh, make you cry and, in its way, change you forever' Julie
Myerson Available with Virago Modern Classics.
The critical and biographical introduction tells of Lady Wortley
Montagu's travels through Europe to Turkey in 1716, where her
husband had been appointed Ambassador. Her lively letters offer
insights into the paradoxical freedoms conferred on Muslim women by
the veil, the value of experimental work by Turkish doctors on
inoculation, and the beauty of Arab poetry and culture.
Set in India's Old Delhi, CLEAR LIGHT OF DAY is Anita Desai's tender, warm, and compassionate novel about family scars, the ability to forgive and forget, and the trials and tribulations of familial love. At the novel's heart are the moving relationships between the members of the Das family, who have grown apart from each other. Bimla is a dissatisfied but ambitious teacher at a women's college who lives in her childhood home, where she cares for her mentally challenged brother, Baba. Tara is her younger, unambitious, estranged sister, married and with children of her own. Raja is their popular, brilliant, and successful brother. When Tara returns for a visit with Bimla and Baba, old memories and tensions resurface and blend into a domestic drama that is intensely beautiful and leads to profound self-understanding.
Anita Desai's new book, hailed as "unsparing, yet tender and funny,"* brilliantly confirms her place among today's foremost Indian writers. FASTING, FEASTING takes on Desai's greatest theme: the intricate, delicate web of family conflict. It tells the moving story of Uma, the plain older daughter of an Indian family, tied to the household of her childhood and tending to her parents' every extravagant demand, and of her younger brother, Arun, across the world in Massachusetts, bewildered by his new life in college and the suburbs, where he lives with the Patton family. Published in Britain to rave reviews, FASTING, FEASTING is "rich in the sensuous atmosphere, elegiac pathos, and bleak comedy at which the author excels" (The Spectator). From the overpowering warmth of Indian culture to the cool center of the American family, it captures the physical -- and emotional -- fasting and feasting that define two distinct cultures. *(Times Literary Supplement)
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