Anita Desai

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**Anita Desai**
Born:	June 24, 1937 (age 69)
Occupation(s):	Novelist
Nationality:	Indian
Writing period:	1970s – present
Influenced:	Kiran Desai

Anita Desai (June 24, 1937 - ) is an Indian novelist and the John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities, Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been short-listed for the Booker prize three times. Her daughter, the author Kiran Desai, is the winner of the 2006 Booker prize.

1 Background
2 Academia
3 Film
4 Awards
5 Select works
6 See also
7 References
8 External links

[edit] Background

Desai was born Anita Mazumdar to a German mother and a Bengali father in Mussoorie, India. She was a student at Queen Mary's Higher Secondary School in Delhi and received her B.A. in English literature from the University of Delhi (Miranda House).

[edit] Academia

Desai has taught at Mount Holyoke 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.

[edit] Film

The 1993 Merchant Ivory Productions film In Custody (based upon her 1984 novel In Custody) was directed by Ismail Merchant, with a screenplay by Shahrukh Husain. It won the 1994 President of India Gold Medal for Best Picture and stars the noted actors Shashi Kapoor, Shabana Azmi and Om Puri.

[edit] Awards

1978 National Academy of Letters Award - Fire on the Mountain
1978 Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize - Fire on the Mountain
1980 Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - Clear Light of Day
1983 Guardian Children's Fiction Prize - The Village By The Sea
1984 Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - In Custody
1993 Neil Gunn Prize
1999 Shortlisted, Booker Prize for Fiction - Fasting, Feasting
2000 Alberto Moravia Prize for Literature (Italy)

[edit] Select works

The Zig Zag Way (2004)
Diamond Dust and Other Stories (2000)
Fasting, Feasting (1999)
Journey to Ithaca (1995)
Baumgartner's Bombay (1988)
In Custody (1984)
The Village By The Sea (1982)
Clear Light of Day (1980)
Games at Twilight (1978)
Fire on the Mountain (1977)
Cry, The Peacock (1963)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Abrams, M.H and Stephen Greenblatt. "Anita Desai." The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2C., 7th Edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000: 2768 - 2785.

Alter, Stephen and Wimal 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.