Anita Desai
(b. 1937)

Although many of Anita Desai's novels deal with issues relating to Indian culture, she has said, "My novels are no reflection of Indian society, politics, or character. They are part of my private effort to seize upon the raw material of life… and to mold it and impose on it a design, a certain composition and order that pleases me… ."

For Desai, writing is a way of discovering underlying truths, and she has been discovering these truths since she started writing at the age of seven. Even as a child, she had some of her pieces published in a children's magazine, and while in college at Delhi University, she wrote stories and reviews that were published in journals. Her first novel, Cry, the Peacock, was published in 1963 when she was 26 years old.

Born Anita Mazumbar in Mussoorie, India, she married Ashvin Desai in 1958. She has two sons and two daughters. Over the course of her writing career, Desai has published numerous novels for adults in addition to children's fiction. She has also taught at colleges in the United States and England, including Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and Girton College of the University of Cambridge.

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