Anita Desai ist eine gefeierte indische Romanautorin, deren Werke sich mit der psychologischen Landschaft menschlicher Erfahrungen auseinandersetzen. Ihre Prosa zeichnet sich durch feine Beobachtung und scharfen Einblick in die Emotionen und das Innenleben ihrer Charaktere aus. Desai erforscht meisterhaft Themen wie Entfremdung, die Suche nach Identität und die komplexen Beziehungen, die unser Leben prägen. Ihr Stil, sowohl poetisch als auch eindringlich, bietet den Lesern eine tiefgründige und zum Nachdenken anregende literarische Reise.
An einem heißen Sommertag besucht Tara, die seit vielen Jahren in Washington lebt, ihr Elternhaus in Neu-Delhi. Im Gespräch mit der älteren Schwester Bim, die nie von zu Hause weggegangen ist, wird die Vergangenheit wieder lebendig. Was Tara abstößt, die Unveränderlichkeit im Hause der längst verstorbenen Eltern, ist für die Schwester eine Beruhigung. Zwei Welten stoßen aufeinander. 'Ein reicher Roman von einer der begabtesten indischen Autorinnen der Gegenwart.' (The New Yorker.)
A classic of our time Untouched by the twentieth century, Thul, the small fishing village near Bombay, is still ruled by the age-old seasonal rhythms. Hari and Lila have lived in the village all their lives, but their family is now desperately down on its luck. Their father drinks; their mother is seriously ill; and there is no money to keep them fed and clothed. Delicately and exquisitely executed, Anita Desaiýs gentle and probing story traces the evolution of Hari and Lila into adults as each of them faces the familyýs predicamentýjust as the first signs of industrial India creep into their villages.
This is a collection of stories where the protagonists set out on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or back where they started from. A beloved dog brings chaos, and a businessman sees his own death.
Features such novellas as "The Museum of Final Journeys" and "Translator, Translated". In "The Museum of Final Journeys", an unnamed government official is called upon to inspect a faded mansion of forgotten treasures, each sent home by the absent, itinerant master. As he is taken through the estate, he reaches the final - greatest - gift of all.
Asked to interview India's greatest poet, Nur, Deven sees a way to escape the miseries of life as a small-town scholar. But the old man he finds deep in the bazaars of Old Delhi bears no resemblance to the idol of his youth. Deven is fooled, bullied and cheated, and drawn into a new captivity.
A wonderful novel in two parts, moving from the heart of a close-knit Indian household, with its restrictions and prejudices, its noisy warmth and sensual appreciation of food, to the cool centre of an American family, with its freedom and strangely self-denying attitudes to eating. In both it is ultimately the women who suffer, whether, paradoxically, from a surfeit of feasting and family life in India, or from self-denial and starvation in the US. Or both. Uma, the plain, older daughter still lives at home, frustrated in her attempts to escape and make a life for herself. Her Indian family is difficult, demanding but mostly, good-hearted. Despite her disappointments, Uma comes through as the survivor, avoiding an unfulfilling marriage, like her sister's, or a suicidal one, like that arranged for her pretty cousin. And in America, where young Arun goes as a student, men in the suburbs char hunks of bleeding meat while the women don't appear to cook or eat at all - seems bewildering and terrifying to the young Indian adolescent far from home...
