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
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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 21 November 2024.]
