To the family living in a 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 renewal of the old jealousies for, unlike her sister, she has failed to escape.[...]

Superbly powerful...A rich, evocative book' Spectator. Like so many other young Westerners in the 60s and 70s, Matteo leaves home to search for spiritual enlightenment in the ashrams of India. He believes he finds it at the feet of 'the Mother', but down-to-earth Sophie, who accompanies him, does no[...]

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.[...]

Set in contemporary Bombay and other cities, this is a collection of 11 short stories that reflect Desai's skill for evoking the full flavour of Indian life. The colours, smells and sounds, as well as some intensely individual characters, are here.[...]

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.[...]

This is a story of survival 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 respo[...]

Gathering together radiant new stories, DIAMOND DUST bears Desai's trademark insight, depth, and tenderness. The tales here travel from India to the American Northeast, deftly exploring the tensions between social obligation and personal independence, between old traditions and new. Wonderfully attu[...]

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.Acro[...]