Product Description
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). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Jewels on a platter - dazzling and colourful stories
Like that enticing assortment of your favourite chocolates laid out invitingly in a tray, each with its own flavour and aroma but broadly speaking, all from the same family, these stories sparkle with life and dazzle you with their charm. They are utterly delightful and exuberant pieces of craft, with a lingering aftertaste. Although each stands distinctly apart from the other, they all have in common the aim to capture the most exquisite and unspeakable moments of human life (and for a majority of stories, Indian life ). These snatches of Indian life, a sister to ours, remind us that the subcontinent is one big cultural brotherhood, in fact if not in spirit.

Bypassing the obvious to capture the evasive is a quality particular to the short story, whose genre is ideally suited to treat the ephemeral. Its constraints allow to expand only sufficiently what the leniency of the novel would lose in all its space. A genre more purely aesthetic and much less moral-bound than its counterparts in prose, it's all about conveying impressions and creating impact. Its constraints rule out indulgence and superfluousness, making it the ideal genre to tackle the subtle.

It is exactly this attribute that Anita Desai capitalizes on. She captures moments and emotions high in delicacy and measures an exact number of words to draw them up - one word less and the sketch is left wanting, one word more and it's already redundant. Her expression is the language of fragility itself and she tackles the most discreet of subjects with effortless poise. Her stories move between a whole range of moods; from exuberant to mellow, from exultant to creastfallen, from delight to ennui, from expectant to disappointed. Her word, like the stroke of the seasoned artist, is sure of itself, it never wavers or falters and fits in its place like a jewel.

In some stories, characters try to grapple with figments of their past which surface unexpectedly, This is the case in `Royalty', `Underground', `T Tomorrow' and `Winterscape'. Characters from the past reappear after long absences and are incompatible with the present. Efforts to accommodate them are slowly swallowed by the demands of routine and changed priorities. This causes disappointments, regrets and sadness. Sometimes, this visit by an `appariton of the past' can momentarily relieve the monotony of life. And it is this moment in time that the story freezes - this strange relief before life resumes its regular drone.

On the lines of James Joyce's `Araby', only a lot more fathomable is `The Artist's Life' - about youth's disillusion...that fraction of a second in which by the slightest jolt an idol falls and an icon breaks. The intensity of this moment in youth, so ridiculously melodramatic and absurd in retrospect - that is the story.

`Five hours to Simla' sketches a colourful, entertaining and exasperating interlude in a family's drive to Simla. Animated by spashes of local colour - Indian sights, Indian sounds and some very Indian loonies.

In a clear Kafkaesque vein, with all its brooding moodis the freaky `The Man Who Saw Himself Drown'. As intriguing as it is irresistible, the story mingles absurdity with sorrow. Very floutingly Sarterian. Less brooding but as tragic, `Diamond Dust' probes the limits of human devotion.

The last and my favourite, `Rooftop Dwellers' is about a young girl embracing the odds of independent life in pursuit of her goals. Her new lodging is her dream house but is not without its inconveniences. This newfound freedom is an exhilarating feeling, one she chooses over everything else.

Much short of grandiloquence but not the least embarrassed of it, these stories appeal to you with all the miniature beauty of trinkets. Surrender to them and let them seduce u with their dainty appeal.

Amazingdiversityofthemes
IenjoyedreadingDesai'sDiamondDustandotherStoriesduetothewiderangeofthemessheexploresinthesestories, ranging from insensitivitytoothers asin" Royalty" , humanobsessions asinthetitlestory ,theneedforprivacy in" Underground " ,siblingandfilialrelationshipsin a cross-cultural framework asin"Winterscape" , anostalgia forthebygonedaysandtimesasin " TepoztlanTomorrow " .Thesenseofplaceisverystronginthesestories , bringingaboutaconfluenceofcultures ,andcastsanundeniableinfluence onthecharacters ,mouldingtheirperceptionsandaffectingtheirchoices . Thestoriesarememorable dueto the powerfuldelineationofcharacters reflectingthesubtleshadesofthecomplexhumanpersonality .Thestoriesstirupthefeelingsofthereaderthroughthe psychologicaldepthandtheperceptivetone .Theelementofdramaandclimacticconflictseemstobelackinginthesestories , yetitistheimaginativevitalityandthepoeticvisionoftheauthorwhichbecomesthetourdeforceofthesestories .

Pretentious or pedestrian, I cant't really decide
Okay, this is an opinion but I didn't like this book. This was not a book for me. I read it, at every step I was caught between what I interpreted to be either dither pretentiousness or elevated lierary pedestrianism, but as I wrote, this is my opinion only. But, as far as I was conerned, worse still I liked it so little that I was virtually compelled to tell someone. To say that this is a brilliant set of observations of humanity would be like saying that a photocopier is capable of seeing into the soul of man, analyzing it, making it extremely and tediously dull, and them making double sided copies of it, in black, gray and white.

Sorry to be so jaundiced but I really don't see what all the fuss is about...

Good Read
Some of these stories are excellent, some just good.Winterscape was one of the best stories I've read.I found the collection to be an excellent observation of "East" meets "West." "Underground" had an especially excellent exploration of thistheme.

Insight and humor
These colorful stories show people in diverse locales having similar attitudes and behaviors.The metaphor for spiritual nourishment runs through them in the status of food served.Desai's writing is vivid andsubtly humorous.A highly recommended collection. ... Read more

Product Description
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)Amazon.com Review
Anita Desai has long proved herself one of the most accomplished andadmired chroniclers of middle-class India. Her 1999 novel, Fasting,Feasting, is the tale of plain and lumpish Uma and the cherished,late-born Arun, daughter and son of strict and conventional parents. Sounited are her parents in Uma's mind that she conflates their names. "MamaPapathemselves rarely spoke of a time when they were not one. The few anecdotesthey related separately acquired great significance because of theirrarity, their singularity." Throughout, Desai perfectly matches form andcontent: details are few, the focus narrow, emotions and needs given noplace. Uma, as daughter and female, expects nothing; Arun, as son and male,is lost under the weight of expectation. Now in her 40s, Uma is at home.Attempts at arranged marriages having ended in humiliation and disaster, and she is at MamaPapa's beck and call, with only her collection of braceletsand old Christmas cards for consolation.

Uma flounces off, her grey hair frazzled, her myopic eyes glaring behindher spectacles, muttering under her breath. The parents, momentarilyagitated upon their swing by the sudden invasion of ideas--sweets, parcel,letter, sweets--settle back to their slow, rhythmic swinging. They look outupon the shimmering heat of the afternoon as if the tray with tea, withsweets, with fritters, will materialise and come swimming out of it--totheir rescue. With increasing impatience, they swing and swing.

Desai's counterpointing of India and America is a little forced, but herfocus on the daily round, whether in the Ganges or in New England, finelydelineates the unspoken dramas in both cultures. And her characters,capable of their own small rebellions, give Fasting, Feasting itssharp bite. --Ruth Petrie ... Read more

Customer Reviews (33)

A Cross Cultural View of Happiness?
Having recently read The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai, I was eager to pick up Anita's novel.Although written by mother and daughter, there really are many similarities in their writing styles, and in their messages about the similarities and differences between the India and Indians of our perception, and those of Empire or America and their lives.In the end, Fasting and Feating demonstrates in two parts: 1) set in India and 2) set in the United States, that both lives are filled with disconnection and human struggles to survive.

The first section of the book is set in India, and established around Uma, a homely, nagged at daughter.Her life seems pretty bleak without the option of a husband for whom she can garnish his reputation.Over and over again, we see Uma being rejected and suffering the pains of being an Indian woman who is not chosen as a wife of a man, and yet, Desai also sets this shame amidst the lives of other women who have been married off and are anything but happy.In one case, what was considered an ideal marriage, is later to be seen as a devastatingly horrible one.

Section two is much shorter, but centers around the star of the family, Arun, who is in the United States going to college.You get the sense that this young man is terribly troubled, and unhappy with his life, regardless of where he's located.In no way do you see him in control of his own life, but like his sister, is very much being controlled by the wishes and desires of his family, parents, and society.

While not the cheeriest of reads, the sad ideas pointed out by Desai's novel show us that all cultures can and do put pressures on us to achieve or be things that we may or may not wish for.In a real sense, the novel is about freedoms wished for, but not seen.

Lovely, heart-rending read about loneliness and family
This is my first Anita Desai book and I enjoyed reading it. A story about the lives Uma and her brother, Arun, living in different continents, the book explores two different cultures and the different ways they treat untraditional, unconventional people. Throughout the book, the thread of the story is thinly related to meals and the food the characters encounter in their days.

Although I enjoyed reading the book, there's a certain restlessness and pointlessness, if you will, throughout the story. It's interesting to learn about the two cultures and I very much relate to the characters' loneliness and feeling of being a stranger even at home. However, I can't help but question the progression of the story. A lot of things are not resolved and the ending is rather unsatisfying. Nevertheless, this is a pretty well-written book and I will definitely read Anita Desai's other books.

Anita Desai
Anita Desai and her daughter Kiran are two foremost writers about India; it's past traditions and contemporary societal clashes told through the stories of very believable, sympathetic characters and their bizarre and purposeful struggles to cope and thrive. Wonderful descriptive language draws the reader into sometimes humorus, sometimes tragic, swirl of life.

Only half a book
Fasting, Feasting is not a cohesive whole, but two badly fitted halves. The first half, which is better written, is set in India and follows Uma, an unmarried middle-aged woman living at the beck and call of her aging parents and enduring a kind of emotional starvation. Her parents will not permit her to establish any sort of life beyond the wall of her home, and her situation evokes pathos. The second half follows her brother, Arun, who is the center of the parents' attention. However, most of Arun's experiences are set in the U.S., where he is studying at an American university and spending the summer living with a suburban family, the Pattons. This section is not only utterly unconvincing, it is a caricature, and, in places, downright dishonest. So oblivious is each American family member---obsessively barbecuing dad, lipsticked mom, sullen and bulimic daughter, jock son---that Arun can't help but be uncomfortable. I suppose there are families as unpleasant as this one, but it's hard to imagine. So eager is Desai to critique what she clearly intends to be a typical American family that she depicts the father returning from work each day with a plastic sack dripping with blood from the meat he must throw on the grill (and that Arun, the mother, and the daughter won't eat). American supermarket meat does not drip through its plastic tray and this book does not compel.

Fasting, Feasting by Anita Desai
In her novel, Fasting, Feasting, Anita Desai eventually accomplishes what many writers attempt and then fail to achieve. She uses light touch, simple language, uncomplicated structure, but at the same time addresses some very big issues and makes a point.

Uma and Arun are children of Mamapapa, the apparently indivisible common identity that parents present. These parents, however, are not at all alike. Mama is protective, perhaps selfish, and not a little indolent. Papa is a parsimonious control freak who locks away the telephone because someone might use it. But they are at least together. Their relationship has survived, despite the long wait for a son, and their disappointment at his disability.

Uma and Arun also have a sister, Aruna. She is bright and pretty, but in her own way she is also disabled, because she is a woman. Arun's disability is visible, but Aruna's exists because of the her society's preconceptions about women.

Uma is not pretty, nor is she academic. She wears thick glasses and has fits. And so in the middle class society the family inhabits, Uma can pursue only two possible roles. Either she can be married off, or she can become a labourer, a near slave for the family. The former, of course, is the same as the latter. Only the location is different. For Uma marriage doesn't happen. It does, but it fails before it starts, since the groom was already married and merely wanted to collect another dowry. The arranged marriages of both Uma's sister and her cousin also fail. Initially well starred, both end tragically.

The first part of Fasting, Feasting suggests a domestic drama, a faintly comic family trying to cope with their own cultural minority status within India's vastness. It takes awhile for the tragic elements of the story to surface. But when they do, they also disappoint, because only the two disabled characters, Uma and Arun, eventually display any honesty or compassion, everyone else being merely selfish, even those who kill themselves to end the pain. For women, it seems, even achievement is nothing but an asset to assist their trade. When offered a place at Oxford, a girl's duty precludes acceptance and necessity frames the letter as evidence of her greater eligibility. So what seemed to be a pleasant family tale of the idiosyncrasies of culture becomes a tragedy, and a tragedy for all women. Ugly, unmemorable Uma is the only apparent survivor, and that only because she is not even a competitor. She exists on the scraps of life she is allowed.

But what of Arun, the disabled boy? Well he is quite a bright lad. He goes to university in the USA, and to an institution with status in Massachusetts. But what is he to do in the holidays when the college is closed? We can't afford to bring his all the way home, concludes parsimonious Papa.

So Arun lodges with the Pattons, an all-American nuclear family, an American Dream of sorts, mum, dad, two kids, one of each. But Dad is a laconic type. A beer from the fridge keeps him quiet. The son has all kinds of ambitions, and yet none that are realistic. Mom is an emotional wreck. She years for something in her confusion, but has not idea what it might be. And her daughter is bulimic. Happy families.

So through Arun's eyes, and to some extent as a result of his culturally challenging presence, Anita Desai presents a picture of middle class American life that is utterly dysfunctional. But it is again the women who are most deeply affected. Mom does all the shopping and cooking to feed the unappreciative men and the daughter who cannot eat. She fantasises about Arun's cultural authenticity, sees in him qualities for which she yearns. The daughter is a complete head case. She is fat wanting to be thin, eating to fast, stuffing sweets until she vomits, perhaps a slave to a male-generated concept of female perfection. And Arun witnesses all of this. Eventually, in his deformity, he is the only presence that is not self-obsessed.

The title is important. Fasting, Feasting presents apparent opposites, two contrasting, if imbalanced scenarios, India and the USA. It offers two deformed observers, Uma and Arun. It unpicks two contrasting cultures and finds that women are slaves in both. The opposites are thus ultimately similar, hardly opposed.
... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (15)

Essential Indian reading
Clear Light of Day is at once an accomplished family drama, a book about growing up and memory, and a historical novel. It captures Old Delhi as it once was and will never be again. It is beautifully written and is a must for anyone interested in modern India.

The novel begins with the reunion of two sisters, Tara and Bim, at the old family house. Bim, once the stronger-tempered of the two, has stayed at home. She is single, teaches at a local school, and looks after their mentally challenged brother. Tara, more accomplished and, as a diplomat's spouse, well-travelled, is prepared to look at the past with more benevolence than Bim, who feels she has somehow been cheated. Much of the drama revolves around their elder brother Raja who, having taken the most risk, is arguably the most successful of the three, but is also cut off from his roots. Indeed, Raja, in pre-partition days, had chosen to pursue Urdu poetry and Islamic studies (the Das family is Hindu), and join the clan of his Muslim hero and mentor, Hyder Ali. The novel alternates between the present and the pre-partition past, between the protagonists' youth and maturity.

Clear Light of Day also works as a historical piece. It conveys the partition and its dangers with considerable power yet without recourse to either brutal or soppy scenes. And it touches upon the politics and their perception among the ordinary people of Delhi. It also portrays Delhi in a vanished light, with scenes on the sandy banks of the Yamuna, Hyder Ali riding by on a white horse, and evocations of a city of gardens and wild birds that is now buried in concrete (note that even Clear Light of Day's present is 1980, the date of writing, not that of a now utterly transformed Indian capital).

Anita Desai is a diaspora writer, but she spent her formative years in India. She has been heard to state that this novel is her most autobiographical, though since Ms Desai's mother was European, this cannot be taken literally.

Day Old Lottery Tickets Are More Interesting
"...while the morning took another stride forward and stood with its feet planted on the tiled floor." - p. 10

Enough said. If you enjoy bad writing, then this is YOUR page turner. But don't believe the hype. This story is nothing like Chekov

Superfluous and slow; leading nowhere..
If your reading this for the historical context, I can understand why you might give this book a higher rating. If your going to read it for the story itself you might be disappointed... the book goes nowhere slowly...very slowly. Its almost as if the author is trying to prove her obvious mastery of descriptive language at the expense of the story itself.

the book that made me drop Asian Lit
Let me start out by being fair - if you know a lot about Indian history/culture this book MAY interest you even if the first 50 pgs. are excruciatingly slow. Otherwise, you will have a hard time understanding the value behind what the characters do. The whole plot revolves around the woman's place in Indian society & more specifically, Bimla's conflict with her brother, Raja. The conflict seems to begin resolving itself in the last 15 pgs, but the author does not take the time to write out the final scene between sister & brother. Very difficult book to enjoy with no satisfactory conclusion.

Thoughtful novel about the divising of the Indian subcontinent
The partition of the Indian subcontinent into two nations has held sway over the Indian imagination for more than three decades. In fiction and in films, the troubles figure as watershed and as metaphor, having as much force for Indians today as the Civil War had for Americans at the turn of the last century, although with the important difference that the War Between the States left this country united rather than divided.

The shadow of partition falls heavily on the characters in this novel by the distinguished Bombay storyteller Anita Desai. In place of neo-Marxist realism or Kiplingesque romanticism, two favorite Indian modes, "Clear Light of Day" is a hauntingly beautiful story of a bourgeois family's struggle against the forces of disintegration. Two sisters, long separated by distance and life-style, take stock of their family's lives and their own. Tara, beautiful and worldly, has returned from living abroad as the wife of a diplomat. Bim, conventional and competent, has never left Old Delhi where she cares for their younger brother Baba. Their older brother, whose childhood ambition was to be a hero, has married a Moslem and become a successful businessman.

"Clear Light of Day" is an ironic title for a novel so preoccupied with the shadowy border between illusion and reality. Memory forever shields most events from the clear light of day. We who conduct our lives without apparent reference to the momentous times we inhabit will discover new ways of seeing ourselves as we wander in the dying gardens of this thoughtful, imaginative and expressively written book. ... Read more

Product Description
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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

An okay read
I read this book on a long plane ride. Well, it was okay...not special, though intermittently interesting. I guess my main problem was that I could not quite empathize with the main character Hugo Baumgartner. As another review says - he is a passive character caught up in terrible events. Yeah, it sucks to be him - but he didn't seem to put in much effort into making his life more worth living! The parts involving his interaction with the cafeteria owner Farookh are amusing. The parts describing his childhood back in Germany are cute. The other parts (the camp, Calcutta etc.) are just okay.
Another problem I had was that India has been potrayed by the author in excessively poor light. I know that over population, poverty, squalor etc. are major problems all Indian cities are faced with - but seriously, is that all Anita Desai knows about India? Being an Indian, it is a shame that she has nothing positive to say about a diverse and fascinating country with a rich culture.
Well I guess 3/5 sounds about right for this book.

Baumgartner's Bombay for everyone
This is a stunning novel that cannot be summed up by the back of the book.Everyone can relate to it despite it's specific and foreign subject matter.Read it!

Wanderer
Baumgartner fed the cats on restaurant leftovers.Under the circumstances he had to patronize the cafes.It was believed that in India Hugo Baumgartner could begin a new life and thus his family had arranged for him to go there.It was felt that India would be safe becauseit was a colony of their neighbor, Britain. He departed for for the East from Venice.His mother could not be compelled to go with him.

It had seemed like bedlam when he walked on what he assumed was British soil.He told Lotte years later that on his first day he ate curry.In Calcutta he stayed in a hotel on Middleton Row.He found he had to build a new language to suit the conditions.

News from Europe became rapidly more alarming.During the war he was taken to an improvised camp at Fort William.Baumgartner was labeled a German and a hostile.He remained in captivity for six years.In the final camp he saw the Himalayas.He carried with him the habits of an only child and an isolated youth.

In the present Baumgartner had a visitor, a blond-haired boy. After the war he had found a room off of Free Street in Calcutta.The city had been bombed. He was advised to go to Bombay.The boy Kurt laughed to have traveled so far to meet H. Baumgartner.When Hugo died, Lotte appeared to say that Hugo should be mourned and that his belongings should be respected.

Anita Desai at her best
Mrs Desai's novel opens with a lady called Lotte fleeing the scene of a murder. She's just lost a close friend, Hugo Baumgartner. When she gets back home, all that is left of Baumgartner's life are a few postcards sent by his mother during the Second World War. The German text on these postcards is always cryptic: "Meine kleine Maus," "Mein Haschen" "Liebchen..." "Do not worry, my rabbit, I am well. Are you well?" "Keep well, my mouse, and do not worry" "I am well..." and they're signed "Mama", "Mutti" or "M".
And so the reader begins to follow Hugo Baumgartner's life, starting with his childhood in Berlin. At the age of about eight, his father, a Jewish furniture retailer, soon loses his business, his store is ransacked by the Nazis and he is taken to a concentration camp. Baumgartner and his mother are forced to leave their beautifully furnished apartment and hide in the former office of the shop. At school, Baumgartner's situation becomes unbearable: his classmates chant to him: "Baumgartner, Baum, hat eine Nase wie ein Daum" (Baumgartner's dumb, has a nose like a thumb.) Eventually, his survival in Germany becoming a matter of days, his mother agrees to Herr Pfuehl's idea to send his son to India, since he has a few connections there in the furniture production business.
There are many moving scenes as the reader discovers, along with Hugo, the sights, sounds and smells of Calcutta and Bombay. And moving too, the life of this pathetic and insignificant man Baumgartner who simply does not belong. Neither to Hitler's Germany nor to India's society, where he is a perpetual "firanghi", foreigner, a wounded survivor.
This novel is the achievement of a superior writer with a sharp perception about human nature, loss, solitude.

A passive character caught up in terrible events.
Baumgartner, a German Jew, gets to India as a teenager, "escaping" the Holocaust. He makes a living there until his Indian patron dies, then retires at an early age into poverty.He never gets over the death of his mother, who refused to emigrate.He is a totally passive personality whose one joy is caring for stray cats in his small apartment.Not onlyis he a dull protagonist, but Desai withholds the few interesting parts of his life until toward the end.Is Desai investigating bigger themes, by looking at the world and Indian society through the eyes of such a character?Is she trying to prove that even such a person is worth exploring?More likely the former, since this is not really an in depth character study.Theevents pallidly reflected are interesting, Desai is a good writer, Baumgartner arouses some feelings of empathy, so book is readable. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

A very moving story
Anita Desai's wonderful novel tells the story of a family living in the small fishing village of Thul, 14 kilometres from Bombay, India. It is more precisely the story of two young people, Hari, a boy of 14, and Lila, a girl of 13, with a will to survive. Their task is not easy. Lila has to look after their mother who is very ill with fever and requires constant care. She is also in charge of all the household chores and has to look after their two younger sisters, Bela and Kamal. Hari on the other hand has to work in the fields, selling whatever he can at the market to feed the family. Indeed, their father has long ceased to be a fisherman, his sole occupation being to get drunk on toddy every night along with his chums in the village.
Fortunately, next to their hut is a large country house called Mon Repos which is owned by the de Silvas from Bombay and whenever they come on holiday to Thul, Lila and Hari can earn some extra money by helping with the household or doing work in the garden. But there is a rumour in the village saying that soon the rice fields and the coconut groves will be replaced by a large fertiliser factory. The location of Thul was chosen by the Government for its closeness to the port of Rewas. So new highways and railway lines are to be build and the villagers are worried about their future. Are they skilled enough to get a job at the factory? What will become of their traditional way of life? Will the air and the sea be polluted by chemicals? When a delegation is sent to Bombay to express their worries to the Minister Sahib, Hari decides to join the party. Before leaving, he decides that Bombay may offer him a better life opportunity than his frightened sisters, his sad house, his ill mother and his drunken father. And it is indeed in Bombay where this delicate boy, who

Great Book from Anita
This is a novel about everything in Indian culture. The author succesfully blended Indian's traditions, environment, politics and bunch more problems that sorrounded the poor Indian family. This is Anita Desai's best novel for me and touches my heart everytime. This is especially true when the bird lover said "Adapt! Adapt!". That part alone may surpass the power of moving and changing that featured in 'Who Moved My Cheese"

The Power of Human Spirit
It is only once in a while that one comes across a book which is so very genuine in presentation and content. The story of Hari and Lila, two village kids aged 12 and 13 respectively and their struggles with an ailing mother and drunkard father, while supporting a family is poignant and refreshing at the same time.
Why and how Hari in the face of abject poverty and destitution runs away to Bombay and how Lila manages to pull through the months when he's not there makes a very pleasing reading. In a country as India, where poverty abounds and personal despair can never be desparate enough, it shows how circumstances can make men out of boys and ditto for girls. There is no loss greater than the loss if human spirit and this is the message from this book. Coping with change is the most basic of human instincts yet we often struggle to maintain status quo.
Apart from this, the style is very pleasant and smooth. Having visited both Bombay and the villages near Alibagh, I can vouch for the fact that justice has been rendered to those environs. The ace in the stroy is the inclusion of Dr Sayyed Ali, India's noted orinthologist, to bring out a very important aspect. Overall the use is symbolism is profound and the conclusions heart warming. A definite read.

Touching Story Of Indian Family
Village By The Sea Is A Touching Story Of A Poor Indian Family, Living In Bombay India. The Main Characters are the 2 oldest Children Lila and Hari, and how they raise the whole family and live through the hard times. At times you really feel Indian climate. One of my favorite parts is Desai's description of butterflys. It's beautiful.

Village by the Sea
This is a story of a poor Indian family who are being torn apart by illness and alcohol. The children of the family work and fight to keep there family together. On the way they have to deal with change and tragedy. This book had a typical ending which is very easy to predict, and had no real surprises. However the characters in the book where strong and determined, they keep the reader reading by the way they got through life on so little. The book shows that if you want something bad enough it is possible to get it. ... Read more

Product Description
Excellently produced classic, great reviews. an important novel, winner of the Sahitya Akademi Award. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Losing your mind!
This author is really good.She is a highly skilled narrator with a keen sensitivity to detail.It is, in fact, that detail which makes warrants the 4-star rating.It must be said, however, that this is not Ms. Desai's best work. The character development in this book is not up to par.Of thetwo characters in this book, Maya and Gautama, only that of Maya has beenadequately developed.While it is true that the book is a study of Maya, -her self-absorption, her weakness, her narrow perspectives, her dependenceon her husband and her father, her delusions about her love of life -Gautama's character needs to be better defined if only as a point ofjuxtaposition, to better describe Maya as it were.Desai does other thingsin the book very well though.It is a good trip through Maya's life andher mind, however shallow her character, because Desai alternately drawsthe reader into a complicity with Maya and also a distance from her.

Feminine fancy and reality
A good, poetic book which evokes feminine fancy and reality with a blend of silky smoothness and coarse roughness.Maya is smooth and silky whereas Gautam is rough and coarse.This book makes you feel, perceive and then act.Anita Desai has a tragic vision of woman's life, and she has combinedan intricate and sensitive style of her own with the quintessence ofreality.The book explores the turbulent and emotional life of Maya, thecharacter, and 'Maya' the illusion itself.Maya the character bends andbreaks whereas illusion stays. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Strikingly original
Nanda Kaul, an elderly lady, decides to live a secluded life in Carignano in Kausali. All she wishes to entertain is stillness and calm in this period of her life. All her life the care of others, her 3 daughters and her husband the vice-consul has been a religious calling she has believed in, a vocation that one day went dull as though its life-spring had dried up. She suffered from nimiety, the disorder caused by the fluctuating and unpredictable excess of the presence of family members, friends and acquaintances.
When one day Nanda receives a letter from her daughter Asha asking her to take care of her great-granddaughter Raka, a feeling of anger, disappointment and loathing arises in her. She doesn't feel like conversing again, she doesn't want to make sure of another's life and comfort, she doesn't want to get involved anymore.
Upon Raka's arrival they work out means by which they can live together and each feels she is doing her best at avoiding the other. Nanda is a recluse out of vengeance for a long life of duty and obligation, Rak is a recluse by nature and instinct. Her parents have long given up to try to socialise her. But slowly the child has the capacity to change things and Nanda discovers new needs within herself. When finally violence explodes, she has to face the truth.
An original novel full of delicate observations about human nature and parental relationships.

life
like nanda kaul, every one of us tries to cope with life, its reality, its horrors, the best way we know. but a human being can do, can PRETEND only as far as life, as far as FAITH will let her/him. once the lies we pretend are our life go up in flames, it is only appropriate that the rest of the world goes up in flames as well. i think that a very 'nice', rather ironic touch is given by the fact that the 'world' (the mountain) is set on fire by nanda kaul's own flesh and blood, the one from her family who is most like herself.

for ME this was an excellent book, which doesnt mean u will necesseraly like it. if ur looking for some meaning, maybe this book could help u find some. it surely helped me.

short and boring
This book is boring. The book is character driven, but it never gets deep enough into the characters to make them interesting. It's overly wordy and too descriptive to the point that it is excessive and overloaded beyond the point of being able to draw an accurate image of what is being described. I only finished the book because it was pretty short, but even that took me a while because it was so slow and boring.

Fire on the Mountain
Set in contemporary India; Nanda Kaul has finished raising her family - children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren - and seems to want nothing more than to be left alone in her remote hillside home to finish out herdays in isolation, peace and quiet. That is until her greatgranddaughterRaka is unexpectedly left with her while the child's mother is ill. Raka iseven more remote and independent in nature than Nanda Kaul. The style ofwriting is poetic; that is, there is no excess of words, and what words arethere create vivid images. The story is character-driven, thus proceedingat a slow pace. And it is sad. I would definitely not recommend this bookto readers who prefer their stories to wrap up neatly and withhappily-ever-after endings. ... Read more

Product Description
First published in 1978 and now reissued in a new cover style, a collection of 11 short stories from the author of BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY. Includes tales about an American wife who, homesick for rural Vermont, turns to the hippies of the Indian hills for consolation; and a painter who renders pictures of creatures he has never seen. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Sense of belonging and displacement
This collection of stories is set in contemporary Indian cities, but the concerns are universal, reflecting experiences of urban life.

When seemingly simple childish games of hide-and-seek lead to the unveiling of a child's sense of belonging and exclusion in the titular story that opens this collection, the reader begins to realize that children are not exempt from the intricacies of social politics.

In the stories that follow, Desai's cast of characters who range from children, teenagers on the brink of adulthood, ordinary men and women, all grapple with their sense of place and purpose in society.

The chance sighting of a couple's tender moment in the face of impending death sparks a young student's epiphany of life and mortality beyond the paper chase in `Studies in the Park', an ageing father and his doctor son struggle with their differing expectations of filial piety in `A Devoted Sun', a musician is forced to question if his contentment in his career as a mere tanpura player has been misplaced in `The Accompanist'.

In the closing story `Scholar and Gypsy', Desai introduces foreign central characters, completing the collection's concern with identity and displacement in a definitive manner.

An American couple, who arrive in Bombay with unequal expectations initially, sees a surprising development when the wife who has difficulty adapting to life in a foreign land, finds a sense of belonging that surpasses that of her homeland that she had been pining for.

Not exactly fabulous, but readable, and tinged with pathos.

Just Lovely!
Beautifully written, rich stories that take place in India.

Indian writers are hot right now, but no one comes close to Desai's fine blend of realism and romance.A child of a German and an Indian, Desai probably isable to synthesize a cultural viewpoint all her own. Her unique (oftensatirical, always witty) eye sees much, and her writing is a bafflinglybrilliant mix of poetry and economy.

Not a bad story in the batch...you'll want to read them again and again! ... Read more

Product Description
Meek and self-effacing, Deven is resigned to his life as a lecturer in an obscure college in Mirpore. When, unexpectadely, an old friend Murad, invites him to go to Delhi to interview the greatest living Urdu poet, Deven sees a chance both to achieve fame and to fulfil his dreams. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

Is there a way to save a dying culture?
This novel was written in 1984. It is long before the emerging power of India today in the field of software and computer technology. It is centered on one junior lecturer in Hindi literature in a provincial college, the archetype of failed ambition and thwarted interests, a typical prisoner of a situation that does not and cannot provide him with the future he wantsbut also of his own lack of technical, economic and moral qualifications to confront the real world. A novel about frustration. Deven is a frustrated Urdu poet, Urdu intellectual, husband and father who married the wife that was arranged and chosen by his family, Hindi lecturer because he does not really like Hindi literature and does it only for survival, adventurer who accepts to do something he had dreamed of for years but without understanding the obstacles he will have to negotiate. So he ends up completely at the mercy of others, subservient to others, the perfect victimized prey of all kinds of incompetent publisher, editor, high-tech dealer and technicians, a poet and his wives, a brothel Madame and her bouncer, etc. Even and especially his supposed friends. In other words he is in custody, i.e. in jail. But there is something worse in this situation. Deven is unable to set limits to other people and hence to protect himself because he feels in charge of taking in custody what they represent. That is particularly true of the poet Nur. He becomes then the custodian of the poet, of his poetry and he does not realize that this positive side of the relation not only gives him a responsibility to take care of this poetry that is entrusted to him, but also makes him the exploited slave of the poet himself. By taking the poet's poetry in custody, becoming the poet's custodian he is at the same time taken in custody, i.e. jailed, trapped by the poet and his wives, the dealer and his helpers, the publisher and editor, even his own wife and son. This double-entendre of custody is nothing but the tip of the iceberg. Deep under, another duality is galloping with rage, the heritage from Indian history with the two colonizations of the recent centuries: the Mughal empire and then the British empire. This is represented in the division of Indian society between the Moslem and Hindi communities. The former smaller but more enterprising in commerce and business, particularly wide open to the Moslem world, the Middle East and the Arab world. The latter more closed onto itself as a full entity that has the tendency to reject others, hence to become jingoistic. Each community is built around its praying place, a Mosque or a Temple. We discover, in a vaguely specified background, the British created the problem because the resistance from the Moslem community was repressed by them, encouraging the jingoism of the other community. They sowed the very seed that was going to destroy them: the hostility between the two communities, religions, cultures, and even languages, Urdu versus Hindi. They played against the Moslem because they were the masters when they arrived, because they were slightly afraid of them since they were a lot more organized, unified and politicized than the Hindi community. They organized a historical backlash against them by repressing the 1857-58 mutiny and taking over the whole country. The book actually centers on Urdu, Urdu poetry and an old dying Urdu poet. Urdu and Hindi are two branches of exactly the same Indo-Aryan language, Hindustani. Hence they come from the same melting pot that was the Iranian plateau and Indo-Iranian languages that gave the two branches of Indo-Aryan languages in the east and Indo-European languages in the west. Urdu was re-persianized through Islam with an important Arabic and Turkish influence and is written from right to left. Hindi kept its Sanskrit origins and was not influenced by Islam and is written from left to right. This writing specificity shows the opposition between the two dialects of the same language resulting from history. Urdu poetry is the direct heir of Mughal culture and is thus pushed aside by Hindi literature. The book makes us feel the opposition between these two worlds, cultures, visions of life from beginning to end. The Urdu poet often expresses the Islamic vision of life, a place where you must suffer to atone for your sins. The Hindi philosophy is also expressed with a strong stress on the good things you must do in your life for your merit to be as high as possible when death and rebirth come by. This leads to two attitudes towards the world and other people. On one side a dominant and exploitative attitude. On the other side a contemplative and submissive attitude. The two are perfectly represented in Murad, the editor, and Nur, the poet, both Moslem on one side, and Deven on the other side. The way people speak to and address one another shows the difference in communities: you address a Moslem as Sahib and a Hindi as Bhai. At times the Moslems seem to have the tendency to call everyone Sahib, but that is marginal in the book. When the author herself speaks of someone by name he is granted the term Mister. In spite of a deep consciousness of women's predicament in this society, with polygamy on the Moslem side and monogamy on the Hindi side, both submissive for the woman or women, the only woman who expresses this predicament directly is the poet's second wife, an ex-prostitute who is absolutely obsessional and excessive out of frustration and over-compensation leaning towards tyrannical domination. A quarter of a century later things the various communities of a multi-cultural society like India still have great difficulties living together and reaching a consensus of tolerance within accepted and acknowledged differences.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

Great BUT only if...
...you are familiar with Urdu and the nuances of life in the Indian sub-continent. Am not at all surprised by some of the negative reviews; it is almost impossible to understand this book if you cannot attempt to relate to an unfamiliar culture and are looking for fairy-tale character transformations. Though the main theme of the book (decadence of something that was once majestic) is universal, the means of exploring it is decidedly ethnic.

This book will give you a fascinating glimpse into the life of a minor celebrity and other commoners in small-town India. Having grown-up in India, I can swear I met a few of the characters in the book, so real they seem. Be prepared for a serious read for Anita Desai's style is that of a strict and no-nonsense school teacher. You feel some power in her sentences and any humor is unintentional; this is her lament for the (probable) extinction of Urdu. But the flow is straight-forward and the book is completely accessible and so you can finish it fairly quickly.

And while you are at it, watch the movie as well. Directed by Ismail Merchant, it captures the spirit of the book and holds its own as a mini-classic with stellar performances and mellifluous music.

A beautiful novel
Touching and wonderfully funny. "In Custody" is woven around the yearnings and calamities of Deven, a small-town scholar from Mirpore in the north of India. An improvised college lecturer, Deven sees a way to escape from the meanness of his daily life when he is asked to interview India's greatest Urdu poet, Nur. But every attempt will only end up in desaster.
A beautiful book, mingling melancholy, disappointment and lots of humour. I recommend it most warmly.

A very interesting look at new versus old
I always feel like I've read something good if I'm still trying to interpret it weeks after I've finished it.Such is the case with "In Custody." On one hand, it's a very entertaining, almost slapstick account of a poor chump who serves badly at a less-than-stellar academic institution.After finishing it, though, I've been doing a lot of thinking about new versus old theme in particular... [There] are very valid questions today, which makes this a timely read.

Delightful, light-handed academic satire.
I haven't seen the film, and I'm not a student of Urdu poetry, but I really enjoyed this book. In fact, it's the only truly delightful, light-handed academic satire I've everread. You'll find none of thehit-'em-over-the-head-in-case-they-miss-the-pointnonsense of Jane Smiley's Moo and none of the archness and linguisticdensity of Alexander Theroux's D'Arconville'sCat. Desai employs a gentle, kind humor andsimple, but totally controlled, style to create two memorable characterswho will long outlive more fervid attempts toshow the sometimes ridiculous lengths to whichacademics must go to achieve their goals and the goals thrust upon them. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a provocative piece of scholarship, and it engages an intriguing aspect of postcolonial writing.-Choice "Fawzia Afzal-Khan's excellent book could stand as a reply to those hostile critics who today attack 'multiculturalism' for reductively politicizing literature. In her trenchant discussion, Afzal-Khan shows just how complex the politics of 'liberation' can be for colonial and postcolonial novelists." -Gerald Graff, University of Chicago"Afzal-Khan's study is a major new contribution to the related fields of Indian writing in English and post-colonial literatures. Focused primarily on four Indian novelists, its arguments and conclusions are of vital importance to our understanding of the many new literatures from the former British colonies. Through her judicious use of the theoretical constructs of Frantz Fanon, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said, and others, Afzal-Khan has produced a fresh and compelling interpretation of the Indian-English novel."-Amritjit Singh, Rhode Island CollegeCultural Imperialism and the Indo-English Novel focuses on the novels of R. K. Narayan, Anita Desai, Kamala Markandaya, and Salman Rushdie and explores the tension in these novels between ideology and the generic fictive strategies that shape ideology or are shaped by it. Fawzia Afzal-Khan raises the important question of how much the usage of certain ideological strategies actually helps the ex-colonized writer deal effectively with post-colonial and post-independence trauma and whether or not the choice of a particular genre or mode employed by a writer presupposes the extent to which that writer will be successful in challenging the ideological strategies of "containment" perpetuated by most Western "orientalist" texts and writers. She argues that the formal or generic choices of the four writers studied here reveal that they are using genre as an ideological "strategy of liberation" to help free their peoples and cultures from the hegemonic strategies of "containment" imposed u ... Read more

Product Description
A study of the short stories and novels of Anita Desai in the context of postcolonial debates about gender, identity, the local and the global and some aspects of Indo-English writing. ... Read more