Anita Desai

Anita Mazumdar was born on 24 June 1937 in Mussoorie, to a German mother and a Bengali father, and grew up in Delhi speaking German at home, Hindi with the neighbours and English at school, which became her language as a writer; she published her first short story at nine. A graduate in English literature of the University of Delhi in 1957, she married Ashvin Desai the following year. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, she taught in the United States, notably at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and lives in that country; her daughter Kiran Desai won that prize in 2006.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelClear Light of DayAnita Desai · 1980Literature