Indian novelist (born 1937)
Anita Desai
Born Anita Mazumdar
Occupation Writer, professor Nationality Indian Alma mater University of Delhi Period 1963–present Genre Fiction Notable works In Custody ;Baumgartner's Bombay Spouse Ashvin Desai Children 4, includingKiran Desai
Anita Desai FRSL Anita Mazumdar ; 1937) is an Indian novelist and emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology .[ 1] Booker Prize three times.[ 2] [ 3] Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novelFire on the Mountain , from theSahitya Akademi , India's National Academy of Literature.[ 4] Guardian Prize forThe Village by the Sea [ 5] Cry, the Peacock ,[ 6] Voices in the City (1963),Fire on the Mountain (1977) and an anthology of short stories,Games at Twilight (1978). She is on the advisory board of theLalit Kala Akademi and aFellow of the Royal Society of Literature , London.[ 7] Companion of Literature .
Desai was born in 1937 inMussoorie , India, to a German immigrant mother, Toni Nime, and aBengali businessman, D. N. Mazumdar.[ 8] [ 1] Berlin . They married during a period when it was still unusual for an Indian man to marry a European woman. Shortly after their marriage, they moved toNew Delhi , where Desai was raised with her two older sisters and brother.[ 9] [ 10]
She grew up speaking Hindi with her neighbours, and German only at home. She also spoke Bengali, Urdu and English. She first learned to read and write in English at school at the age of seven. As a result, English became her "literary language". She published her first story at the age of nine.[ 8]
She attended Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School in Delhi and received her B.A. in English literature in 1957 from theMiranda House at theUniversity of Delhi . The following year she married Ashvin Desai, later the director of a computer software company and author of the bookBetween Eternities: Ideas on Life and The Cosmos .[ 11] [ 12]
They had four children, includingBooker Prize -winning novelistKiran Desai . Her children were taken to Thul (nearAlibagh ) for weekends, where Desai set her novelThe Village by the Sea [ 13] [ 8] Guardian Children's Fiction Prize , a once-in-a-lifetime book award judged by a panel of British children's writers.[ 5]
Desai published her first novel,Cry, the Peacock , in 1963. In 1958 she collaborated withP. Lal and founded the publishing firmWriters Workshop . She considersClear Light of Day [ 14]
In 1984, she publishedIn Custody Urdu poet in his declining days – which was shortlisted for theBooker Prize . In 1993, she became a creative writing teacher atMassachusetts Institute of Technology .[ 15]
The 1999 Booker Prize finalist novelFasting, Feasting The Zigzag Way The Artist of Disappearance [ 16]
Teaching and academic awards [ edit ] Desai has taught atMount Holyoke College ,Baruch College , andSmith College . She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters , and Honorary Fellow ofGirton College, Cambridge to which she dedicatedBaumgartner's Bombay .[ 17]
In 1993, afilm adaptation of her novelIn Custody was made byMerchant Ivory Productions , directed byIsmail Merchant and screenplay byShahrukh Husain . It won the 1994President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture and starredShashi Kapoor ,Shabana Azmi andOm Puri .[ 18]
Cry, The Peacock (1963)[ 1] ISBN 978-81-222008-5-0 Voices in the City (1965), Orient Paperbacks,ISBN 978-81-222005-3-9 Bye-bye Blackbird (1971), Orient Paperbacks,ISBN 978-81-222002-9-4 Where Shall We Go This Summer? (1975), Orient Paperbacks,ISBN 978-81-222008-8-1 Fire on the Mountain (1977),Random House India ,ISBN 978-81-840005-7-3 Clear Light of Day ISBN 978-81-840001-5-3 In Custody [ 20] Baumgartner's Bombay (1988), Harper Perennial,ISBN 978-0618056804 Journey to Ithaca ISBN 978-81-840007-7-1 Fasting, Feasting ISBN 978-81-840005-8-0 The Zigzag Way ISBN 978-81-840007-6-4 Rosarita (2024),[ 21] ISBN 978-10-350444-3-6 Collections of novellas and short stories [ edit ] Games at Twilight (1978),Vintage Publishing ,ISBN 978-00-994285-3-4 Scholar and Gipsy (1996),Weidenfeld & Nicolson ,ISBN 978-18-579976-5-1 Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000),Vintage Books Collected Stories (2008), Random House India,ISBN 978-8184000566 The Artist of Disappearance (2011), Mariner Books,ISBN 978-05-478401-2-3 The Complete Stories (2017), Chatto and Windus Penguin Random House UK,ISBN 978-1784741891 ^a b c d "Anita Desai-Biography" .British Council . Chatto & Windus. Archived fromthe original on 20 June 2018. Retrieved29 April 2018 .^ Sethi, Sunil (15 November 1984)."Book review: Anita Desai's 'In Custody' .India Today . Retrieved1 December 2021 . ^a b c d "Booker prize winners, shortlists and judges" .The Guardian . 10 October 2008. Retrieved5 October 2021 .^ "Sahitya Akademi Award – English (Official listings)" .Sahitya Akademi . Archived fromthe original on 31 March 2009.^a b c "Guardian children's fiction prize relaunched: Entry details and list of past winners" , guardian.co.uk, 12 March 2001; retrieved 5 August 2012.^ Cry, the peacock | WorldCat.org .OCLC 1145430492 .^ Sethi, Sunil (30 November 2013)."Clear Light of Day is about time as a destroyer, as a preserver: Anita Desai" .India Today . Retrieved1 December 2021 . ^a b c Liukkonen, Petri."Anita Desai" .Books and Writers . Finland:Kuusankoski Public Library. Archived fromthe original on 14 October 2004. ^ "Revisiting Anita Desai" .www.rediff.com . Retrieved21 November 2020 .^ Guardian Staff (19 June 1999)."A passage from India" .The Guardian . Retrieved21 November 2020 . ^ "After Anita, Kiran; Ashvin Desai goes the write way" .News18 . Retrieved1 December 2020 .^ "Author Ashvin Desai loses war with cancer" .Zee News . Retrieved1 December 2020 .^ Dr. Kajal Thakur (12 May 2015).Man-Woman Bonding In Socio-Cultural Indian Concept ISBN 978-1-329-13103-3 [self-published source ^ Elizabeth Ostberg."Notes on the Biography of Anita Desani" Archived 20 January 2007 at theWayback Machine ^ "LitWeb.net" . Archived fromthe original on 6 October 2006. Retrieved27 December 2006 .[page needed ^ "A Page in the Life: Anita Desai" Archived from the original on 12 January 2022. Retrieved24 March 2018 .^ Baumgartner's Bombay , Penguin, 1989.^ " .The Statesman . Retrieved1 December 2020 .^ "Conferment of Sahitya Akademi Fellowship" . Official listings,Sahitya Akademi website. Archived fromthe original on 1 July 2017. Retrieved15 January 2014 .^ "In Custody by Anita Desai" .Purple Pencil Project . 25 May 2020. Retrieved9 June 2020 .^ "Rosarita by Anita Desai" .www.panmacmillan.com . Retrieved3 July 2024 .Abrams, M. H. andStephen Greenblatt . "Anita Desai".The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2C, 7th Edition. New York:W.W. Norton , 2000: 2768 – 2785.Alter, Stephen andWimal Dissanayake . "A Devoted Son by Anita Desai".The Penguin Book of Modern Indian Short Stories. New Delhi, Middlesex, New York: Penguin Books, 1991: 92–101. Gupta, Indra.India's 50 Most Illustrious Women . (ISBN 81-88086-19-3 Selvadurai, Shyam (ed.). "Anita Desai:Winterscape".Story-Wallah: A Celebration of South Asian Fiction. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005:69–90. Nawale, Arvind M. (ed.). "Anita Desai's Fiction: Themes and Techniques". New Delhi: B. R. Publishing Corporation, 2011. Interviews Papers
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
1968–1980 Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1968)D. R. Bendre ,Tarasankar Bandyopadhyay ,Sumitranandan Pant ,C. Rajagopalachari (1969)Vaikom Muhammad Basheer ,Firaq Gorakhpuri ,Vishnu Sakharam Khandekar ,Viswanatha Satyanarayana (1970)Kaka Kalelkar ,Gopinath Kaviraj ,Gurbaksh Singh ,Kalindi Charan Panigrahi (1971)Masti Venkatesha Iyengar ,Mangharam Udharam Malkani ,Nilmoni Phukan ,Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi ,Sukumar Sen ,V. R. Trivedi (1973)T. P. Meenakshisundaram (1975)Atmaram Ravaji Deshpande ,Jainendra Kumar ,Kuppali Venkatappa Puttappa 'Kuvempu' ,V. Raghavan ,Mahadevi Varma (1979)1981–2000 Umashankar Joshi ,K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar ,K. Shivaram Karanth (1985)Mulk Raj Anand ,Vinayaka Krishna Gokak ,Laxmanshastri Balaji Joshi ,Amritlal Nagar ,Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai ,Annada Shankar Ray (1989)Nagarjun ,Balamani Amma ,Ashapurna Devi ,Qurratulain Hyder ,Vishnu Bhikaji Kolte ,Kanhu Charan Mohanty ,P. T. Narasimhachar ,R. K. Narayan ,Harbhajan Singh (1994)Jayakanthan ,Vinda Karandikar ,Vidya Niwas Mishra ,Subhash Mukhopadhyay ,Raja Rao ,Sachidananda Routray ,Krishna Sobti (1996)Syed Abdul Malik ,K. S. Narasimhaswamy ,Gunturu Seshendra Sarma ,Rajendra Shah ,Ram Vilas Sharma ,N. Khelchandra Singh (1999)Ramchandra Narayan Dandekar ,Rehman Rahi (2000)2001–present Ram Nath Shastri (2001)Kaifi Azmi ,Govind Chandra Pande ,Nilamani Phookan ,Bhisham Sahni (2002)Kovilan ,U. R. Ananthamurthy ,Vijaydan Detha ,Bhadriraju Krishnamurti ,Amrita Pritam ,Shankha Ghosh ,Nirmal Verma (2004)Manoj Das ,Vishnu Prabhakar (2006)Anita Desai ,Kartar Singh Duggal ,Ravindra Kelekar (2007)Gopi Chand Narang ,Ramakanta Rath (2009)Chandranath Mishra Amar ,Kunwar Narayan ,Bholabhai Patel ,Kedarnath Singh ,Khushwant Singh (2010)Raghuveer Chaudhari ,Arjan Hasid ,Sitakant Mahapatra ,M. T. Vasudevan Nair ,Asit Rai ,Satya Vrat Shastri (2013)Santeshivara Lingannaiah Bhyrappa ,C. Narayana Reddy (2014)Nirendranath Chakravarty ,Gurdial Singh (2016)Honorary Fellows Premchand Fellowship Ananda Coomaraswamy Fellowship
1960–1970 1971–1980 1981–1990 1991–2000 2001–2010 2011–2020 2021–present
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