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Anita Desai
Anita Mazumdar Desai
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Who is this?
Anita Desai (born Anita Mazumdar; 1937) is an Indian novelist and the emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Literature. She won the Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea (1983). Her other works include Cry, the Peacock, Voices in the City (1963), Fire on the Mountain (1977) and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight (1978). She is on the advisory board of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, London. Since 2020 she has been a Companion of Literature.
Career
- 1937Born
- 1977Won Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize
- 1978Won Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
- 1978Won Sahitya Akademi Award
- 1989Won Padma Shri in literature and education
- 2014Won Padma Bhushan in literature & education
- Member of Royal Society of Literature
- Member of American Academy of Arts and Letters
- Notable work: Fire on the Mountain
Trivia
- •Place of birth: Mussoorie
- •Citizenship: British Raj, Dominion of India
- •Known as: writer, novelist, university teacher, short story writer
What happened recently
Kiran Desai’s first novel in nearly 20 years is shortlisted for the Booker. Last time, she won it
Anita Desai’s ‘beautiful novella’ Rosarita features on Barack Obama’s 2025 Summer Reading List
Kiran Desai interview: ‘I wanted to write a present-day romance with an old-fashioned beauty’
Anita Desai's 'Rosarita' review: Concise, evocative story of a daughter retracing her mother's journey
Rosarita by Anita Desai review – a haunting tale about family bonds and betrayals
Anita Desai: 'I thought the book would seem ghostly now, but it's all coming around again'
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