Anita Desai

Rachel Farebrother (Swansea University)
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Anita Desai was born in Mussoorie, a hill station north of Delhi, to a German mother and a Bengali father. After reading English at Delhi University, she married Ashvin Desai, combining her writing career with the demands of raising four children. She emerged on the literary scene in the 1960s, part of a new generation of women writers, such as Nayantara Sahgal and Shashi Deshpande, who sought to displace neo-colonial and patriarchal authority. Unlike many Indian writers in English who have risen to prominence in the west since the 1980s, Desai has lived in India for most of her career. It was only in 1993, when she began teaching at MIT, that she adopted the itinerant life of a postcolonial migrant, dividing her time between the USA, Britain and India.

As a small child, Desai spoke

2720 words

Citation: Farebrother, Rachel. "Anita Desai". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 14 April 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4942, accessed 19 March 2024.]

4942 Anita Desai 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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