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Bianca Duma Prof.: Margarita Carretero Course: Introduction to Research Methods in Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and Literature Date: 18/11/11

Indian- English Literature: Anita Desai

When researching about Anita Desai, the first thing I have done was looking her up on Google to have an initial idea about who she is and then moved on to different websites as the first options on Google were not academic sources (wikipedia.org, lecturalia.com, etc.) The first one I checked was the library of the University of Granada when I found a short selection of books, e-books articles and interviews, written by or about the author: Desai, Anita. Diamond Dust; and other stories. London: Vintage, 2000. Print. ; Desai, Anita. Clear light of day. London: Heinemann, 1980. Print.; Patel M.F. An exposure of feminine psyche in some novels of Anita Desai. Jaipur, India: Sunrise Publishers & Distributors, 2008; Desai, Anita. The Books Interview by New Statesman, Aug 29, 2011; Vol. 140, No. 5068, p. 45. Print.; Desai, Anita. The Artist of Disappearance, Library Journal, Oct 01, 2011; Vol. 136, No. 16, p. 68-69; After that I checked external references in ebrary, Jstor, Project Muse, and the University of Auckland library website where I found many other printed books and journals such as: Desai, Anita. Fire on the mountain. Harmondsworth : Penguin, 1981. Print.; Desai, Anita. In custody. London: Heinemann, 1984. Print; Bande, Usha. The
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Desai, Anita. O Calcutta! New Republic, Aug 15, 1994; Vol. 211, No. 7, p. 43-45

novels of Anita Desai : a study in character and conflict. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1988. Print.; Desai, Anita. Fasting, feasting. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Print.; Desai, Anita. Diamond Dust: stories. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 2000. Print.; Desai, Anita. Baumgartner's Bombay. London : Heinemann, 1988. Print.; Desai, Anita. Journey to Ithaca. London : Heinemann, 1995. Print.; Desai, Anita. The zigzag way. London : Chatto & Windus, 2004. Print.; Dhawan, Rajinder Kumar. The Fiction of Anita Desai. New Delhi : Bahri Publications, 1989. Print.; Desai, Anita. Games at twilight ; and other stories. London: Heinemann, 1978. Print.; Colm Hogan, Patrick; Pandit, Lalita. Literary India: Comparative Studies in Aesthetics, Colonialism, and Culture. The Journal of Asian Studies , Vol. 56, No. 2 (May, 1997), pp. 525-526. Print.; Guttman, Anna. The Jew in the Archive: Textualizations of (Jewish?) History in Contemporary South Asian Literature. Contemporary Literature, Volume 51, Number 3, Fall 2010, pp. 503-531; etc. The printed books are typically found in section 823 of the library, which according to the List of Dewey Decimal classes refers to the English Fiction part. Many other articles were discarded because they were just name coincidences or related in topic with Desais writings but with no relevance for this research.

I based my biography on pages 47 and 48 of Sanga, Jaina C. South Asian Novelists in English : An A-to-Z Guide. Santa Barbara, CA, USA. ABC-CLIO. 2003. Anita Desai was born in 1939 in Mussorie and she is half Bengali, half German. In that period the British Raj was about to gain independence and it eventually did ten years after. However, the European way of life and English language remained
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Desai, Anita. O Calcutta! New Republic, Aug 15, 1994; Vol. 211, No. 7, p. 43-45

fashionable and some people, amongst whom we can count Anita, preferred them to the traditional Indian ones. That sentiment can be perceived in the majority of her writings as well as those of Nirad C. Chaudhuri and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. They preferred a Eurocentric writing on India, acting as if they were outsiders. After her graduation from Delhi University, Desai often changed her place of residence all throughout India, the United States and United Kingdom, publishing books and articles and attending conferences. Among the awards she received for her works we can count the 1977 Royal Society of Literatures Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for her novel Fire on the mountain and three of her novels made it into the final list of the Booker Prize.

Proceeding with the essay, I will now summarize an article by Desai that I found most interesting, namely O Calcutta!1, . She introduces this paper referring to Bengal Nights, Mircea Eliades novel inspired in an episode that happened to him in Calcutta in the 1930s. This writing struck her due to the amount of clichs regarding Indian culture that it included. He tells the story of Allan, which is a pseudonym for himself, during his stance in India with a Bengal family, whose daughter he fell in love with. He seemed obsessed with their skin color because it was darker than his. At the beginning it seemed unaesthetic to him, but later on he began to idealize his lover,
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Desai, Anita. O Calcutta! New Republic, Aug 15, 1994; Vol. 211, No. 7, p. 43-45

Maitreyi, as if she were a goddess. The stories he told sound like a reminiscence of the discovery of America, comparing the Indians with the American-Indian tribes. The depiction is that of the ignoble savage, uneducated, only following their basic instincts and highly sexually active. Brutality is another feature that according to Eliade was the norm at that time, when fathers beat their own children to prove once again male superiority. In Eliades story, the romance had to end because Maitreyis parents found out about it and kicked him out of the family, and that was a great eye-opener for him that made him realize that he did not belong in that undesirable society. Desais indignation regarding this portrayal of her own country grew even stronger when contrasting this work with its response, written by Maitreyi herself forty years after, when she found out about the book. She gave her side of the story to the public, extremely upset because of the amount of lies that had been said about her, not only regarding her relationship with Mircea, that was a mere crush on her behalf and didnt get to actual intercourse, and everything he wrote about her family and the Indian society was based on misconceptions. When Maitreyi confronted him in the 1980s, she realized that Mircea had never seen her as a person, but as a myth, and he would never change his way of thinking.

Desai, Anita. O Calcutta! New Republic, Aug 15, 1994; Vol. 211, No. 7, p. 43-45

To conclude, we must recognize Anita Desais importance within the IndianEnglish literature, both because of her fiction and critical articles. Even though she is more inclined towards Eurocentric writing, in the attached article we can clearly see she takes pride in her native country.

***Notes: I know this shouldnt go here but I figured it would be easier than writing a separate message: -my version of Word sucks the footnote was only supposed to be on page 3 -I tried to use MLA style of quotations but I have this feeling that I totally failed at it, so sorry for that too Cheers, Bianca.

Desai, Anita. O Calcutta! New Republic, Aug 15, 1994; Vol. 211, No. 7, p. 43-45