{"title":"Books by Anita Desai","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780141359762","title":"The Village by the Sea","description":"\u003cp\u003eWinner of the 1982 \u003ci\u003eGuardian \u003c\/i\u003eAward for children's fiction, \u003ci\u003eThe Village by the Sea \u003c\/i\u003eis a survival story by the novelist Anita Desai.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSet in a small fishing villlage near Bombay, Lila and Hari, aged 13 and 12, struggle to keep the family, including two young sisters, going when their mother is ill and their father usually the worse for drink. When Hari goes to Bombay to find work, Lila seems to be responsible for everything. Although the book paints a picture of extreme poverty, it demonstrates the strength of the family even in the most extreme circumstances and offers a powerful picture of another culture.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43201480556722,"sku":"9780141359762","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780141359762.jpg?v=1786011624"},{"product_id":"9781784873929","title":"Clear Light of Day","description":"\u003cp\u003e**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK**\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDiscover the classic, Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel from one of India's finest ever writers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo the family living in the shabby, dusty house in Delhi, Tara's visit brings a sharp reminder of life outside tradition. For Bim, coping endlessly with their problems, there is a renewal of the old jealousies for, unlike her sister, she has failed to escape. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLooking at both the cruelty and the beauty of family life and the harshness of India's modern history, \u003ci\u003eClear Light of Day\u003c\/i\u003e brilliantly evokes the painful process of confronting and healing old wounds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Clear Light of Day does what only the best novels can do; it totally submerges us.' Anne Tyler\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43205065769138,"sku":"9781784873929","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784873929.jpg?v=1786025486"},{"product_id":"9781035044436","title":"Rosarita","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e'Anita Desai is a magnificent writer' - Salman Rushdie\u003cbr\u003e'Every new work from her is a gift' - Kamila Shamsie\u003cbr\u003e'\u003ci\u003eRosarita \u003c\/i\u003eis transcendent . . . a testament to Desai’s enduring genius as a writer' - \u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Tantalising' - \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom three times Booker-shortlisted author Anita Desai, \u003ci\u003eRosarita \u003c\/i\u003eis a beautiful, haunting novel that explores memory, grief, and a young woman’s determination to forge her own path.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA young student sits on a bench in a park in San Miguel, Mexico. Bonita is away from her home in India to learn Spanish. She is alone, somewhere she has no connection to. It is bliss.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then a woman approaches her. The woman claims to recognize Bonita because she is the spitting image of her mother, who made the same journey from India to Mexico as a young artist. No, says Bonita, my mother didn’t paint. She never travelled to Mexico. But this strange woman insists, and so Bonita follows her. Into a story where Bonita and her mother will move apart and come together, and where the past threatens to flood the present, or re-write it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePraise for Anita Desai \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Bewitchingly beautiful’ - \u003ci\u003eThe Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Profoundly elegiac’ - \u003ci\u003eNew Statesman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57685801304437,"sku":"9781035044641","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":44581517525170,"sku":"9781035044436","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781035044641.jpg?v=1792598993"},{"product_id":"9780099428497","title":"In Custody","description":"Touching and wonderfully funny, \u003ci\u003eIn Custody\u003c\/i\u003e is woven around the yearnings and calamities of a small-town scholar in the north of India. An impoverished 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 - a project that can only end in disaster.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56222894522741,"sku":"9780099428497","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099428497_da7e58e1-293b-4635-878d-c49ca9fdb0df.jpg?v=1786011604"},{"product_id":"9780099428534","title":"Games At Twilight","description":"Set in contemporary Bombay and other cities, these stories reflect the kaleidoscope of urban life - evoking the colour, sounds and white-hot heat of the city. Warm, perceptive, humorous and touched with sadness, Anita Desai's stories are peopled with intensely individual characters - the man spiritually transformed by the surface texture of a melon; the American wife who, homesick for the verdant farmlands of Vermont, turns to the hippies in the Indian hills; the painter living in a slum who fills his canvasses with flowers, birds and landscapes he has never seen.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56223039226229,"sku":"9780099428534","price":13.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099428534_259b27fe-a2ea-4f0b-b20c-e66825205a23.jpg?v=1786011607"},{"product_id":"9780099553953","title":"The Artist of Disappearance","description":"\u003cp\u003eA triptych of beautifully crafted novellas make up Anita Desai's exquisite new book. Set in modern India, but where history still casts a long shadow, the stories move beyond the cities to places still haunted by the past, and to characters who are, each in their own way, masters of self-effacement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRich and evocative, remarkable in their clarity and sensuous in their telling, these stories remind us of the extraordinary yet delicate power of this pre-eminent writer.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56223368708469,"sku":"9780099553953","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099553953_88272536-2d8c-48fa-8dc9-43fcef7f7191.jpg?v=1786011703"},{"product_id":"9781784873936","title":"Fasting, Feasting","description":"\u003cp\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR THE 1999 BOOKER PRIZE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUma, the plain, spinster daughter of a close-knit Indian family, is trapped at home, smothered by her overbearing parents and their traditions, unlike her ambitious younger sister Aruna, who brings off a 'good' marriage, and brother Arun, the disappointing son and heir who is studying in America.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcross the world in Massachusetts, life with the Patton family is bewildering for Arun in the alien culture of freedom, freezers and paradoxically self-denying self-indulgence.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56305163403637,"sku":"9781784873936","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784873936_4c5d2ab1-2fa7-4e0d-9d9b-ea6bafdb854c.jpg?v=1786025487"},{"product_id":"9781784706647","title":"The Complete Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Complete Stories\u003c\/i\u003e gathers together Anita Desai's short story collections \u003ci\u003eDiamond Dust\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eGames at Twilight \u003c\/i\u003eand the novellas of \u003ci\u003eThe Artist of Disappearance\u003c\/i\u003e, with a new preface from the author.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom the icy suburbs of Canada to the overcrowded B\u0026amp;Bs of Cornwall, via the hill towns and cities of India, Anita Desai observes human behaviour unflinchingly but not unkindly, recognising our ordinariness and our strangeness, and capturing both with quiet precision.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56312839176565,"sku":"9781784706647","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781784706647_976b5423-45ce-4ab0-a47a-71cbc904331d.jpg?v=1786026095"},{"product_id":"9781529986044","title":"Fire On The Mountain","description":"Vivid and alive, this powerful novella about one woman's belated rebellion against the powers that be is Anita Desai at her finest.   Nanda Kaul retreats to a quiet house in the hills, determined to live out her days in solitude. But the arrival of her great-granddaughter disrupts the stillness she has carefully built, bringing with it memories she would rather leave behind. Fire on the Mountain is Anita Desai’s subtle, haunting novel of isolation and memory.   BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.   ** The perfect stocking filler for short fiction readers**","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56369016537461,"sku":"9781529986044","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529986044_55912569-1917-4c7b-b5a0-f09f9747ae73.jpg?v=1786023360"},{"product_id":"diamond-dust-other-stories","title":"Diamond Dust \u0026 Other Stories","description":"Whole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection, as Desai trains her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England, from Cornwall to Mexico.  Her protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or surprisingly back where they started from.  Caught up in cycles of hope and disappointment, their lives are ruled by the seasons, or straitjacketed by the conventions of hospitality, friendship and family.  In the title story, a beloved dog, black as Satan, brings nothing but disaster; in another, a business man away from home sees his own death; and elsewhere, old relationships stir up buried resentments, issues demand commitment - or escape.  And in the final quiet masterpiece, one of Delhi's girls of slender means finds a kind of joy and freedom in a strange rooftop community.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466569884021,"sku":"9780099289647","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099289647.jpg?v=1785654627"},{"product_id":"journey-to-ithaca","title":"Journey to Ithaca","description":"Like so many other young Westerners in the 1960s and 1970s, Matteo leaves home to search for spiritual enlightenment in the ashrams of India. He believes he finds it at the feet of 'the Mother', but down-to-earth Sophie, who accompanies him, does not find her inspiring so much as mysterious, and decides to trace the Mother's own story - from her travels with an Indian dance troupe in Paris, Venice and New York, to her search for divine love in India.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466602488181,"sku":"9780099428473","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099428473.jpg?v=1785654660"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-anita-desai.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}