New Releases by Anita Desai

From “world-class writer” (The Washington Post) and three-time Booker finalist Anita Desai, an exquisitely written stunning exploration of love, place, memory, history, and the secrets between a mother and her daughter. Away from her home in India to study Spanish, Bonita sits on a bench in El Jardin de San Miguel, Mexico, basking in the park’s lush beauty, when she slowly becomes aware that she is being watched. An elderly woman approaches her, claiming that she knew Bonita’s mother—that they had been friends when Bonita’s mother had lived in Mexico as a talented young artist. Bonita tells the stranger that she must be mistaken; her mother was not a painter and had never travelled to Mexico. Though the stranger leaves, Bonita cannot shake the feeling that she is being followed. Days later, haunted by the encounter, Bonita seeks out the woman, whom she calls The Trickster, and follows her on a tour of what may, or may not, have been her mother’s past. As a series of mysterious events brilliantly unfold, Bonita is unable to escape The Trickster’s presence, as she is forced to confront questions of truth and identity, and specters of familial and national violence. A masterpiece of storytelling from a gifted writer, Rosarita is a profound mediation on mothers and marriage, art and self-expression, and how the traumas from the past can impact future generations.

«Se il villaggio perisce, perisce anche l'India. L'India non sarà piú l'India. La rinascita del villaggio è possibile solo se esso non verrà piú sfruttato». Mohandas K. Gandhi

Tutti i racconti di Anita Desai. Ventuno racconti, in un intimo e struggente viaggio a ritroso, dall'inedito Il pianerottolo del 2007 ai primi testi pubblicati negli anni Sessanta.

«Uno sguardo sulla vita in famiglia nella provincia indiana e nella periferia americana per svelare sintomi di malessere paralleli: dai roghi delle spose alla bulimia, mentre i padri sono ovunque carnivori e le madri si ostinano a rimpinzare figli vegetariani e figlie isteriche». «The Guardian»

Animati da presenze insieme estranee e familiari, i racconti di Anita Desai inquietano e riscaldano con ironia e attenzione per il dettaglio, fino a creare un senso di struggente intimità. Come ha scritto «The Times», queste storie scintillano con l'intensità dei «veri diamanti».

Sophie and Matteo are young and in love, sharing a dissatisfaction with their bourgeois Italian upbringing. Naturally, like so many other young Westerners in the sixties and seventies, they go to India. But the realities of life in an ashram ignite their differences; Sophie wants to be a tourist and go to Goa and eat shrimp, which Matteo scorns, seeking the ‘real’ India. Pragmatic Sophie is disillusioned by the hardships they encounter, while her husband, who yearns for spiritual fulfillment, sees only the purity of ascetic life, leading him to Mother, a charismatic guru. Trying to reclaim an ailing Matteo, Sophie embarks on a new journey in search for a different truth; that of Mother’s mysterious past. Soon, she finds that the immortal has a history of her own; born in Cairo, she was once Laila, a dancer who toured the world before coming to Bombay to search for ‘divine love’. What each of the three people discover, on their individual quests, is at its heart that ancient truth: that wisdom is found in the journey itself. A stirring, profound exploration of emotional exile, of sacred and profane loves, Journey to Ithaca is a masterful novel.

Parfois un chevrier ou un villageois qui cherchait du bois dans la forêt, un fagot sur la tête et une badine à la main, le rencontrait sur un sentier qui descendait vers la vallée. Ils murmuraient quelque salutation tout en pressant le pas derrière leurs chèvres, n'obtenant qu'un grognement pour réponse. Mais au-delà, on cessait de le voir : on arrivait à une grand rocher arrondi qui aurait pu être un colossal magicien noir attendant qu'il arrive, puis jetant son ombre sur lui comme une cape. Et Ravi disparaissait. Ravi n'a aimé ni son enfance ni sa jeunesse. À la mort de ses parents, il choisit de retourner vivre dans la maison où il passait ses vacances, au pied des contreforts de l'Himalaya, souvent noyés dans la brume. C'est là qu'il va peu à peu se couper du quotidien, s'isoler, s'effacer. Mais peut-on complètement échapper au monde dit «civilis黠? Dans les deux autres longues nouvelles qui composent ce recueil, Anita Desai revient sur le thème de l'oubli, de la disparition, des souvenirs devenus incertains. Au soir de sa vie, un haut fonctionnaire se demande s'il n'a pas en fait imaginé sa découverte d'un extraordinaire petit musée à l'abandon, autrefois, dans un village indien isolé. Une traductrice va peu à peu réinventer le texte sur lequel elle travaille, au point de s'y perdre. Là encore, où est la frontière entre la réalité, le fantasme et les vrais-faux souvenirs ?

Hugo Baumgartner is a firangi wherever he goes—too dark for Hitler’s Germany, too fair for India. Escaping the Nazi regime but losing his parents to it, the wandering Jew builds a life in India only to be interrupted by war, and then partition—and finally finds a home in multitudinous Bombay. We meet him as a kindly, rather hapless old man who spends his days making the rounds of local teashops to scavenge for his many cats. Then, one day at the Café du Paris, one of his regular haunts, he encounters a surly young German of the new order—a drug-crazed hippie who will change his life forever. Set in Berlin, Venice, Calcutta—and of course Bombay—Baumgartner’s Bombay is the story of the twentieth century and a memorable portrait of Baumgartner, survivor, victim, everyman.

Buried resentments, unexpected disappointments, new friendships, small acts of cruelty, journeys that take you back to where you started. With trademark compassion and tender irony, Anita Desai’s short stories give us familiar worlds made unfamiliar, to wonderful effect. An ageing couple is stranded in a stultifying Delhi summer by the visit of a roguish old Oxford friend, who trades on his charm; an American woman turns to hippies living in the Indian hills, homesick for the farmlands of Vermont; a dog terrorizes the neighbourhood but is cherished by his stern master; a Delhi girl of slender means finds a new kind of freedom with her young friends, in her barsati home; a peaceful game of hide and seek turns into a nightmare; a businessman sees his own death. In one masterly volume, for the first time ever, here are Anita Desai’s collected stories —u00adu00adincluding Diamond Dust and Games at Twilight.

While their parents went to parties at Delhi’s Roshanara Club, the children of the Das family brought themselves up, reading Byron, listening to the gramophone, and watching over sad, alcoholic Mira masi. Many years later, the youngest, Tara—now a mother of two—has returned from America to the scene of her unusual, lonesome childhood. Here, as always, is her sister Bim, doggedly single college-lecturer and caretaker of all. In her presence, Tara sinks into the blissful torpor of home, at once her dreamy old self but careful as ever around her older sister. For at the heart of this reunion are numerous tensions: Tara feels the persistent guilt of having, like the others, abandoned Bim; their autistic brother Baba is increasingly unquiet; and Bim has not spoken to their other brother, Raja, for years and refuses to go to his daughter’s wedding. Clear Light of Day is vintage Anita Desai, a novel as wonderfully contemplative as a cup of afternoon tea.

In this sensitive portrayal of human nature, Anita Desai, one of India’s foremost writers, paints an intimate portrait of lives impacted by the quest for identity and purpose. Deven, a Hindi lecturer in small-town Mirpore, lives a humdrum existence. A chance to interview Nur—India’s greatest living Urdu poet—offers him an escape from his dreary life. But the Nur he meets is an enfeebled man, surrounded by clashing wives and preying sycophants. Deven’s decision to be the custodian of Nur’s verse gives birth to an unusual alliance between the two. Stimulating and thought provoking, In Custody is a brilliant parable lamenting the gradual corrosion of culture and tradition in the face of modernity, and a dazzling study of the complexity of human relationships.

Plain, unmarriageable Uma has failed to outgrow her childhood home, with its bittersweet treats of puri-alu and barfi. Overprotected and starved for a life, she is smothered by her overbearing parents, successful sister Aruna, and Arun, the family’s disappointment of a son. Across the world in Massachusetts, where Arun has gone as a student, family life in an American suburb is bewilderingly different. The Pattons, who he lives with, appear strange and terrible. The women don’t appear to cook at all, though they stuff their shopping carts; the men barbecue huge chunks of meat; their daughter binges on innumerable candy bars. Increasingly, Mrs Patton is desperate to be a vegetarian, like Arun. But what Arun wants most is to be invisible. Moving from a traditional Indian household to an American one, Fasting, Feasting is a powerful exploration of hunger and plenty, and one of Anita Desai’s most socially acute novels.

Gone are the days when Nanda Kaul watched over her family and played the part of Vice-Chancellor’s wife. Leaving her children behind in the real world, the busier world, she has chosen to spend her last years alone in the mountains in Kasauli, in a secluded bungalow called Carignano. Until one summer her great-granddaughter Raka is dispatched to Kasauli – and everything changes. Nanda is at first dismayed at this break in her preciously acquired solitude. Fiercely taciturn, Raka is, like her, quite untamed. The girl prefers the company of apricot trees and animals to her great-grandmother’s, and spends her afternoons rambling over the mountainside. But the two are more alike than they know. Throughout the hot, long summer, Nanda’s old, hidden dependencies and wounds come to the surface, ending, inevitably, in tragedy. Marvellous yet restrained, Fire on the Mountain speaks of the past and its unshakable hold over the present.

Award-winning novelist Anita Desai explores time and transformation in these three artful novellas

"The zigzag paths of these characters converge on the Day of the Dead, bringing together past and present in a moment of powerful epiphany."--BOOK JACKET.

Cuando Deven, un oscuro profesor de una pequeña localidad de la India sin apenas horizontes vitales, se ve enfrentado a un reto inesperado entrevistar a Nur, el más grande poeta vivo en urdu, la lengua de la poesía por excelencia, postergada por el patrocinio oficial del hindi, sus más íntimas fibras se remueven, sus ilusiones agostadas reverdecen y nace en él una luminosa fantasía que le hace sobreponerse a su poquedad. Sin embargo, esto no será más que el inicio de una tragicómica serie de desventuras que acabarán llevándolo a tomar 'En custodia' la poesía y la propia existencia del poeta, tarea en la cual se esbozará una suerte de redención a su mísera existencia. Anita Desai traza en esta inolvidable novela una profunda y sutil reflexión sobre la inestabilidad y complejidad de las relaciones humanas, siempre prisioneras entre la fantasía y la realidad, la nostalgia y el espejismo, el presente perentorio y el inexorable paso del tiempo.

Tout était préparé pour l'exode de l'été : les malles faites, la maison marchant au ralenti, quasi fermée, prête à être abandonnée durant les trois mois de chaleur desséchante, de poussière envahissante, tandis que ses propriétaires se replieraient dans leur retraite à la montagne... C'est alors qu'arriva une carte postale, une de ces cartes ordinaires de couleur sépia qu'utilisait encore Raja, en raison peut-être de son âge. Les mains de Sarla se mirent à trembler : des nouvelles de Raja... Il était en Inde. Il serait à Delhi la semaine prochaine, il comptait bien l'y trouver... Mais cette visite tant attendue d'un ami d'autrefois qui vient à l'improviste s'inviter chez un couple de paisibles retraités va en réalité bouleverser leur vie de fond en comble. Dans une autre des neuf nouvelles qui composent ce recueil, un jeune Indien installé au Canada révèle à sa femme qu'il a eu non pas une mais deux mères pour l'élever... En Inde, à nouveau, une famille partie en vacances en direction de l'Himalaya va, à la faveur d'un immense embouteillage, faire de curieuses découvertes... Peu de choses, certes... Mais de sa voix calme et douce, Anita Desai sait dire l'essentiel, qui est souvent cruel. Sous une surface en apparence lisse, elle nous fait entrevoir de redoutables coins de pénombre.

" Elles se retrouvaient parfois dans d'autres villes, à des mariages familiaux auxquels accouraient les parents des quatre coins du pays, ravies d'exhiber leurs saris et leurs bijoux les plus somptueux... On aurait dit que leurs mères avaient soigné toutes ces jeunes filles comme des fleurs en pot jusqu'au moment où leurs joues seraient assez pleines, leurs lèvres assez brillantes ; petits rires et chuchotements aboutissaient à cette grande décision : le mariage. " Mais il s'agit presque toujours d'une union arrangée où l'amour ne joue aucun rôle. Possessive, autoritaire, étouffante, la famille indienne se révèle être ici un univers de violence, de cruauté et d'angoisse. Ravissante et intelligente, Anamika doit accepter le mari qu'on lui impose et qui sera son bourreau. Uma, laide et sotte et donc impossible à marier, est condamnée à devenir la vieille fille au service de tous. Quant à Arun, le fils, le préféré, celui à qui tout est dû, il se heurtera, aux États-Unis où il croyait pouvoir respirer un air de liberté, à d'autres contraintes. Dur, lourd de sensualité inexprimée, Le jeûne et le festin est peut-être le plus beau livre d'Anita Desai.

Desai''s classic novel of the Holocaust era is the story of the profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The book follows Hugo Baumgartner as he leaves behind Nazi Germany and his Jewish heritage for Calcutta, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war''s end.

Whole lives come into focus in this rich and diverse collection, as Desai shines her luminous spotlight on private universes from India to Canada and New England, from Cornwall to Mexico. Her protagonists set forth on journeys and find themselves suddenly beyond the pale, or surprisingly back where they started. Caught up in cycles of hope and disappointment, their lives are ruled by the seasons, at the mercy of heat and dust, or straightjacketed 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 businessman away from home sees his own death. Elsewhere, old relationships stir up buried resentments, issues demand commitment, or escape. And in the final masterpiece, one of Delhi''s girls of slender means finds a kind of joy and freedom in a strange rooftop community. Desai writes beautifully, with humour and delicacy, charm and compassion, about ordinary lives in a disconcerting world.

À quarante ans, Sita attend sans l'avoir désiré son cinquième enfant. Epouse d'un riche homme d'affaires de Bombay, elle déteste les charges de la vie quotidienne qui l'épuisent. Lourde, lasse, elle décide de retourner pour les vacances d'été dans l'île où elle a passé toute son enfance auprès de son père, un émule de Gandhi. Mais les souvenirs que l'on a crus heureux peuvent révéler des surprises. Sita va revivre l'angoisse des épisodes troubles qu'elle croyait avoir oubliés, tandis que s'ancre en elle cette idée étrange et folle : il ne faut pas que l'enfant naisse dans ce monde si cruel. Elle continuera à le porter longtemps, peut-être toujours. Traduit de l'anglais par Anne-Cécile Padoux.

" Certains lieux qu'on a beaucoup aimés devraient nous être interdits pour toujours. Au premier chef, ceux qui nous ont vus naître et grandir. Dans la maison de Delhi, où elle revient respirer l'air du passé, Tara constate un peu plus à chaque séjour que la musique des souvenirs est rarement gaie, souvent mélancolique, parfois même funèbre. C'est qu'ici, dans la demeure aux jardins parfumés, sont restés Baba, le frère autiste de Tara, et Bim, leur sœur aînée, qui, après s'être occupée des parents et d'une tante, est aujourd'hui, comme il se doit, vieille fille. Une fois encore, l'heure est au règlement de comptes. Rien n'est plus faussement serein, plus trompeur que la claire lumière du jour, nous dit Anita Desai, tout au long de ce roman calme, cruel et splendide. " Michel Grisolia, L'Express Traduit de l'anglais par Anne-Cécile Padoux.