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Contributed articles. ... Read more

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Study on imagery and lyrical style in the works of Anita Desai, b. 1937, an Indian fiction writer in English. ... Read more

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an attempt to discuss comprehensively the symbolism of Anita Desai, an English novelist ... Read more

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The present book takes a fresh look at gender and feminist perspectives through the novels of the three women writers across the globe, namely Toni Morrison, Michèle Roberts and Anita Desai to formulate a comparative model on the theory of 'Desire.' The psychoanalytical model of research does not offer any homogeneity of points of view, rather a dialogical perspective to suggest refractions of feminist desire. As the book analyses in detail family and community, mother-daughter and father-daughter relationships, along with marital relationship, it also discusses the politics of gender representation in Afro-American, British and Indian cultures. The author begins with the comparative analysis of the 'male gaze' in the three cultures to discuss the growth and development of feminist resistance to the patriarchal texts and subtexts there, and then goes on to discuss the works of the writers and the stances taken by them. Drawing on the theories of the French feminists along with Jung's ideas on 'Sacred Marriage' and 'Deconstruction' and Judith Butler's 'Dream of Symmetry', the analysis foregrounds a new historicity which is distinctly non-linear and discursive in the writings of Toni Morrison, Michèle Roberts and Anita Desai. The book is definitely a major contribution to Comparative Literature and Gender Studies. It will be useful for postgraduate students and scholars interested in such fields of study. ... Read more

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Study of an Indian fiction writer in English. ... Read more

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LIFE IS A CYCLE - VILLAGE BY THE SEA-ANITA DESAI
YOU ARE JUST A PARTICLE ON THE WHEEL, SO DON'T BE PESSIMISTIC, YOU WILL DESCEND, BUT GRADUALLY YOU WILL RISE ABOVE, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS TO STICK TO THAT TYRE WITH DETERMINATION, COURAGE, AND ADAPT YOURSELF TO ITS CONTINUOUS CHANGES, THEN LIFE WILL SURELY BE BLISS FOR YOU!!! ... Read more

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Study of Anita Desai, b. 1937, Indic fiction writer in English. ... Read more

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Contributed papers on an Indic fiction writer in English. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (8)

An engaging novella
Eric and Emily, he calls her Em' for short, live in a cozy Boston apartment, cozily pursuing their postgraduate work.Emily is a scientist.Eric is working on a dissertation on immigration patterns in the US.But Eric is not fulfilled by his research.He would rather sit and drink coffee and watch the world pass him by.He is tempted to throw his dissertation away.

Emily is not particularly pleased with Eric's growing lassitude.It contrasts sharply with her immersion in her subject.A point of crisis appears in their relationship when Em announces that she must go on an extended field trip to the jungles of the Yucatan to pursue her research. Eric is at a loss, but latches on to Emily's upcoming trip as a means to escape his doldrums. When they get to Mexico City, Eric is told he cannot follow Em into the jungle and must devise his own purpose for the visit.He is suddenly impelled to visit the part of Mexico where his father was born.His father is the son of a Welsh miner who was imported into Mexico in the early part of the Twentieth Century to work as a part of a colony of Welshmen.Eric decides his trek, in anticipation of an undefined novel he intends to write, will be to go where his father was born and that he will find his inspiration there.

The novella follows Eric on his wanderings as he makes his way to the remote mining town where his grandfather once worked.Em has told him that he will discover much more about himself while he is alone than he would with her and she is right.He is witness to the clash of cultures and the pomposity of an ancient, wealthy, European woman who has made saving the local Indian tribe from the ravages of the mining industry her life's work.

But it is when he arrives at the dusty, primitive town where his grandfather once lived that he truly comes to terms with himself.He discovers a world of mystery and magic that could not be a greater contrast to the finite, focused world that Emily inhabits.

The novella is slender yet full of Ms. Desai's mellifluous prose.She describes a world where magic and realism meet.The novel's title comes from the zigzagged routes that the Indian miners during the Spanish conquest used to make when they carried ore uphill from deep in the mines.Eric's zigzagged course brings him too into the light carrying, perhaps, a treasure just as precious of that of the Indian miners, self knowledge.

Disappointing!
This book reads more like a tourist guide than a novel. It seems as if the author has visited Mexico and wants to record her reactions to it rather than create artistically structured fiction. Characters are unconvincing, sentences are long and unstructured, and the narrative style shows little skill. A forgetable novel.

The Zigzag Way
Beautifully written with some of the most vivid descriptions
of modern Mexico I have read. Maintains interest, but the
plot goes into extensive development of certain characters
only to abandon them.And the ending was less than
satisfying. Yet a deeply talented writer worthy of the read.

Mediocre
"The Zigzag Way" is a short book, almost novella size, without a great deal of character development.It does have a shifting cast of characters unified by the willingness to change the familiar for something new, Em being the exception, and also the one character with no real connection to Mexico.At the end the protagonist, unlike his father, still has not found what that something new will be. For a slim book, there was an historical dimension which was valuable, but it almost seems like Desai was also seeking a spiritual experience in Mexico which turned out to be disappointing. The concluding scene has some emotional power, but just doesn't add up to anything really significant.While Desai can create fine metaphors, there were times I felt they were inserted when no metaphor was called for, so that they simply brought attention to themselves. On a personal note, I was better able to visualize Em because I had recently seen the movie "Kinky Boots", and pictured the fiancée.

A luminous novel set in Mexico
Eric O'Brien is an uncertain and awkward young man, a would-be writer and a traveller in spite of himself. Happy to follow his more confident girlfriend Em to Mexico, he is overwhelmed with sensory overload and gradually seduced by the strangeness, the colour, the mysteries of an older world and its celebrations of the Dia de los Muertos. He finds himself in a curious quest for his own family in a ghost mining town, now barely inhabited, where almost a hundred years earlier young Cornish miners worked the rich seams in the earth. Until Pancho Villa and revolution came to Mexico.
A recording of this novel is available from BBC Audiobooks and Eleanor Bron's reading is truly breathtaking. Highly recommended. ... Read more

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Young lovers Sophie and Matteo are dissatisfied with their middle-class upbringing and travel to India in search of spiritual fulfillment, but the realities of life on an ashram intensify the lovers' differences, until they learn that wisdom is found in the journey itself, not its destination. Reprint. NYT. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Subtle, ambiguous book
This was the first book of Desai's that I'd read; at first, it seemed a little dull, but as I got into the rhythm of its storytelling (gradual, gentle) I found it more and more compelling, and by the end, I loved it.The style is simple and naturalistic (places, societies and individuals all beautifully observed), and yet nothing is presented with a clear black-and-white moral meaning -- or if it is, something else will soon contradict it.But at the end, a picture has been painted, something meaningful has been set out -- something about love, the conflicts between different kinds of love, and perhaps about what it can mean to go on a pilgrimage.

The story of a troubled relationship
Matteo and Caroline were both brought up in Italy. Caroline was sent to a convent school in Milan and Matteo to a school in Turin which had been recommended by his uncle. However Matteo performed very poorly: he was bad at maths, could not sing and played football in a disastrous way so that he was constantly bullied by his classmates. Finally his parents decided to take him back home and they found a tutor, Fabian, for his education. But he remained a rebellious student, learning nothing, eating nothing. Whenever his father talked to him about a career in banking or in the family silk business, Matteo would simply smile faintly. Finally in the summer of 1975, he married Sophie, the daughter of a German banker and together they left for India taking with them Matteo's much beloved copy of Hermann Hesse's "The Journey to the East".
In Bombay they met Pierre Eduard who took them to an elderly woman who performed a few tricks as a form of worship to the glory of Shiva. Whilst Sophie remained unimpressed with what she called "party tricks", Matteo on the other hand was quite transfixed by what he had seen. Later they met Mr Pandey, a "deus ex machina" as Sophie called him in her exasperation, who suggested that they go and live in an ashram. After that Matteo came up with the idea that they replicate the journey which a famous saint had undertaken on foot to a shrine where he obtained enlightenment. But Sophie could not share Matteo's enthusiasm about searching for "the mystery that is the heart of India" during the exhausting expedition and even after such a short time spent in the country, she had no doubt that it was a culture to which she would never belong. Matteo on the other hand was literally seized by madness with his quest for the "devine light" despite the warnings that "the gods are destructive in this country". Will Matteo's studying with a swami at a distant ashram help him recover his senses? Will Matteo and Sophie go through this adventure together and recover their love?
Mrs Desai shows hard and driven people in her novel, the mutual contempt of a wife and a husband, the rejection foreigners may experience in India and also a man deluding himself in an impossible quest. Perhaps the author's other novels like "Baumgartner's Bombay" or "In Custody" are more accessible, less obscure.

Remarkable
Matteo and Sophie travel to India where he searches for spiritual enlightenment while she sulks in boredom and disdain.Desai does a remarkable job of capturing the spirit of the seeker, the hypocrisy of those who prey upon them, the disappointment and destruction that seeking can bring, the relief of finding one's true teacher, and the escstasy of meeting god.A truly rich, beautiful, and compelling story that makes the reader loathe to put the book down.If Desai's other novels are on par with this one (and I intend to find out), her books will be filling my shelves.

Gorgeous.
Desai is a writer who repays re-reading. This book is subtle and textured. The author plays marvelously with time and consciousness in ways reminiscent of Virginia Woolf, brought up to date.

Not recommended
This is one of the worse books I have ever plodded through.I can't believe I actually finished it.It is full of rambling prose, and uninteresting characters, in a very boring, uneventful plot.Why wouldanyone want to write such a book?What is the point?Matteo and Sophiearen't very deep people, and the bit about the Mother was so uninteresting. It wasn't even worthy of one star and is in such contrast to books by thesame author, that have a soul.Why would anyone want to write about thiskind of indulgent, boring uninteresting people, even though I know theirtype exists.They aren't worthy to be characters in any literature. ... Read more

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Showcases writing by women from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Arranged in sections headed "Love and Life", "Work and Play", "Culture and Creativity", "Environment" amd "Politics and Safety", this book is enhanced by more than 40 colour photographs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Touching family story
A touching story of how the little kids in a poor family in India work together towards a better future.Definitely worth a read...

story of struggle for survivalof children
This book elaborates the difficulties that children from poor Indian families face in their struggle for survival. More so if they have a drunkyard as thier father.Further one gets a closer peep into the problem of migration from villages towards cities in search of prosperity and enhanced employment opportunities.The challenges,brutal struggle for survival of a city life has been clearly elucidated herein. In all its a very satisfying reading experience which promises economic salvation of India in the form of industrialization. ... Read more

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Evocative sagaof "escape", both real and imaginary.
If Anita Desai's novels revolve around the theme of alienation andlonliness, then this book is certainly no exception.When the protagonistfeels the impact of yet another pregnancy, both the minor irritations andthe frank grittiness of life become too much to bear.She shuts downemotionally and escapes physically to the island of her childhood where shehopes to remain pregnant with the baby forever since bringing another childinto the world is more that she can handle.Though seemingly fantasticalin nature, Anita Desai paints a very vivd portrait of a woman who seemsalienated by the very air that she breathes.Readers will be gripped bythe storyline though the English may seem somewhat stilted and artificialto the American reader.The tidy summation , as well, seemed a bitsimplistic and not exactly what the reader may have hoped for.All in all,a great little book embracing the universal themes of a woman's life. ... Read more

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Diamond Dust is full of treasures of short stories!
If you don't know Anita Desai, the Indian-German writer and author, you should get to know her. She might be the next Nobel Prize winner in literature. This compilation of short stories was picked up by me at a drugstore for only a dollar. The short stories include in this selection are Royalty, Winterscape about an Canadian Indian man and his unusual parentage, Diamond Dust which is truly a tragedy about a beloved animal, Underground about a British couple traveling abroad, The Man Who Saw Himself Drown is an unusual but entertaining story, The Artist's Life, Five Hours to Simla or Faisla, Tepozlan Tomorrow, and The Rooftop Dwellers. Desai's writing style is packed with details and information about the characters, the setting, and the story involved. Desai's writing style is easy to read but you have to read closely to really appreciate her style and language use. I loved Winterscape the best so far, broke my heart in Diamond Dust, was amused by a man who saw himself drown and lived to tell about it, and I'm working through the rest but I bet she doesn't disappoint her readers. ... Read more

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Set in 1947 when India was partitioned, this is the story of Zuni, a young Muslim girl, whose family is caught up in the upheaval. Rather than fleeing Pakistan, as many other Muslim families did, Zuni's family seek refuge in the gardens of a local mosque. ... Read more